


In Xanadu

by sevenfists



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Coming of Age, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 02:11:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 73,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16030835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfists/pseuds/sevenfists
Summary: Crosby, lingering nearby, gave Zhenya a tentative smile. They were all smiling, everyone in the room, looking at Zhenya and Crosby and dreaming big dreams, the same dreams that had pried Zhenya out of Magnitogorsk and launched him halfway around the world. Zhenya knew what was expected of him, him and Crosby together, and why not? Why couldn’t they?“Yes,” he said in English, watching Crosby’s face, and saw the moment when Crosby’s smile turned real.





	In Xanadu

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story about Geno. Seventy-one million thanks to saintroux, as always, for helping me with the Russian internet, and for all of the elbow grease; baby Geno has now been thoroughly scrubbed. <3 I’m also grateful to everyone who listened to me cry about this story for ten interminable months.
> 
> There’s a lot of conflicting information about Geno’s pre-NHL life and early years in the NHL. In some instances, Geno himself says two different and contradictory things in different interviews. When possible, I’ve tried to use multiple sources to triangulate the truth. (A good example of this is Geno living with Gonch immediately vs. staying in a hotel for a while. I think what I’ve written here is what actually happened, based on multiple articles from 2006, but again, reports vary.) I’ve done my best to portray events accurately, but in some cases this involves inference and magic. And in some cases I chose to ignore all facts and do what I wanted. I’m happy to share my research if anyone is interested.

> When Evgeni Malkin was a teenager, he had a conversation with his agent, who was telling him all about another one of his young clients. The agent told Malkin this other kid was incredibly special, a generational talent.
> 
> “I said what's his name? He said Sidney Crosby,” Malkin recalled. “I said how old? He said 14 years old. I said wow. He said he's beaten all the records already, he's like unbelievable.” — [Pens superstars share special bond](https://www.nhl.com/penguins/news/pens-superstars-share-special-bond/c-287770016)

 

### The City by the Magnetic Mountain

“His name’s Sidney Crosby,” Zhenya’s agent said.

Zhenya leaned closer to the television screen. The footage wasn’t great. It was grainy, like it had been copied several times. But he could see #9 going hard for the net, easing the puck between the defenseman’s skates, and then the slick backhand—like it was nothing.

“He’s small,” Zhenya said.

“He’s fourteen,” Gennady said. “He’ll grow.”

Genya gave him the tape to take home, and he and Denis watched it again that night on the shitty little TV in their apartment, both of them cross-legged on the floor with their faces right up against the screen, the way their mother always scolded them for, close enough that Zhenya imagined he could feel the crackle of electricity against his skin like a ghostly hand. 

“That’s him?” Denis asked dubiously.

“Yeah,” Zhenya said, rapt. “Look at the way he dekes! The goaltender doesn’t expect him at all.”

“He’s not very fast,” Denis said.

Zhenya scoffed. “You can work on getting faster. But you can’t teach someone to see the ice like that.”

“I guess so,” Denis said. He watched the tape through to the end, but when Zhenya rewound to the beginning, he got up and went into the kitchen, where their mother was still clattering around after dinner. Zhenya said nothing. It was clear by then that hockey wasn’t Denis’s future. But it would be Zhenya’s future, God willing, and maybe someday he would meet Crosby on the ice, and see that incredible backhand in person.

He watched the footage four times, until his father lowered his newspaper and said, mildly, “I think that’s enough for one evening, Zhenya.”

He lay awake for a while that night, curled on his side with Denis snoring from the other side of the room. Behind his closed eyelids, he saw Crosby skating toward the net, the puck on his stick, his blades cutting smooth tracks through the ice.

\+ + +

Zhenya was fifteen, and he was growing. He was hungry all the time. His hips ached, sometimes, and not only from being slammed into the boards during practice. Rows of horizontal stretch marks lined his lower back, like some great beast had clawed him there and left scars.

“When are you going to stop?” his mother asked him. “Aren’t you tall enough?”

Zhenya shrugged. “Why stop now? I’ll keep going until I have to duck my head to pass beneath the doorframe.”

“I can’t afford to keep feeding you,” his mother said, and swatted at him with a dish towel. “You’ll have to find a job.”

Of course she wasn’t serious. Zhenya’s scholarship supported all of them, and he was proud of that but also terrified, because what if he wasn’t good enough, in the end? It would be the steel mill for him, and he didn’t want that—Christ help him. He wanted to play hockey, for as long as he could, until either his body or his talent failed him. 

“Maybe we’ll make something of you yet,” Coach Vitman told him that winter, one morning after practice.

“I’ll make something of myself,” Zhenya said, and puffed up his chest.

Vitman rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you hear me say _maybe_? Go get in the showers.”

Zhenya was busy that year, with hockey before school and after, and playing basketball with his friends from the apartment block, and trying to get Dasha Presnyakova to give him the time of day, although she was two years older than he was and had a boyfriend. But in between all of that he hassled Genya to send him more footage of Crosby.

“There’s nothing else,” Genya told him, “you’ve seen everything I have,” and Zhenya had to acknowledge that Genya couldn’t make highlight reels materialize out of thin air. 

“Send me anything you come across,” Zhenya said, clutching the receiver to his ear. Genya was back in Moscow at least through the end of the month, and Zhenya couldn’t bear to wait that long. “Please.”

“Of course I’ll send it to you,” Genya said, “but there are many other players—”

“I know,” Zhenya said, “but he’s going to be the best.”

“We’ll see,” Genya said, but a few weeks later Zhenya came home from practice in the evening and found a package waiting for him, a padded envelope with a tape inside. His mother had a strict no-TV-before-homework rule, and Zhenya sat down at the kitchen table and whizzed through his trigonometry in record time while his mother peeled potatoes for dinner. 

“It’s good to see you taking your schoolwork so seriously,” his mother said approvingly.

Zhenya kept his head down and didn’t say anything. She would smell the lie on him if he opened his mouth.

After dinner, he had to suffer through the evening news on Channel One, and then Denis turned the TV to the detective show he liked. 

“I want to watch my tape,” Zhenya said, feeling his throat clog with frustration.

“Denis, one episode and then it’s Zhenya’s turn,” his father said, which was perfectly reasonable, but Zhenya still quivered with impatience until the episode was finished and he was able at last to stuff the tape in the VCR.

The footage was more of the same: Crosby skating circles around everyone else on the ice, sometimes literally. He liked to go around behind the net and bounce the puck in off whichever poor fool was trying to box out the forwards. In each of his exuberant cellies, Zhenya saw a joy he recognized innately, because he felt the same way every time he watched the puck dent the back of the net.

He wished he could talk to Crosby. It was impossible for many reasons—they didn’t share a common language, and that was just for starters—but he thought Crosby would understand Zhenya’s secret nighttime hopes, the things he only let himself consider in the safety of darkness. Magnitogorsk was real and all around him, and the NHL was an impossible dream from another hemisphere, but Zhenya wanted it. He didn’t talk about it. Whenever someone mentioned it, he said something appropriately modest and changed the subject. But he could talk about it with Crosby. Crosby would know. 

“Is this that same Canadian kid?” his father asked.

“Yeah,” Zhenya said. “Barry sent Ushakov the tape.”

“He’s good, but it’s most important for you to focus on your own game,” his father said. “Don’t let yourself get distracted, hmm?”

“I won’t,” Zhenya said. On the TV, Crosby went top shelf with a perfectly executed slapper and raised his arms above his head, undersized, blurry, and exultant.

\+ + +

He saw Crosby in the flesh for the first time at World Juniors, the year he was seventeen. He was excited first about winning, and second about hanging out with Sasha Semin, and third about seeing Crosby.

Finland was exactly as cold and boring as he expected. Most of Russia’s games in the preliminary round were played in Hämeenlinna, an hour outside of Helsinki, and there was nothing to see or do. Zhenya and Sema took a frigid walk to the castle their second day in town, when they didn’t have a game, and even that was a disappointment.

“I thought it would be bigger,” Zhenya said, staring up at the red brick walls, the keep square and straight beneath its cap of snow.

“Boring,” Sema agreed. “Let’s go back. My nuts are going to freeze off.”

Sema was almost twenty and by far the coolest guy on the team. He smoked, which Zhenya found disgusting but also undeniably badass. He never said much on the bench or in the dressing room, but his quiet seemed less like shyness and more like he thought everything they did was vaguely amusing but not worth the oxygen to comment on. And yet somehow Zhenya kept finding himself in the position, too good to be true, of sitting beside Sema at meals, or being invited to play cards in his room in the evening, or sharing a thrilling, knowing look when one of the other guys said something dumb. Zhenya was playing for Magnitka by then, he had a professional contract and a professional salary to go along with it, but he was well aware of being the youngest guy on the junior team and also a backwater hick, if the guys from Moscow were to be believed. But Sema liked him, somehow, for some reason, and Zhenya knew not to question his good fortune. 

A few days in, the team took a bus to Helsinki to play Sweden. Canada played Switzerland that same day, a few hours before Russia took the ice, and Zhenya wouldn’t let either winning or Sema stop him from seeing Crosby play.

He didn’t have to choose. Coach Ishmatov sent them all to watch the game. The arena was more than half empty, which lowered Zhenya’s opinion of Finns even further, and they got good seats right at the blue line. Zhenya sat with Sasha Ovechkin on one side and Sema on the other and felt smug and ashamed of it. Sema liked him best out of anyone on the team, and Zhenya knew he wasn’t supposed to care, but he did, very much.

“Keep an eye on Crosby, he’s supposed to be good,” Sasha said.

“You think we don’t know?” Sema asked. “Shut up, Sanya.”

“Both of you shut up, I want to pay attention,” Zhenya said, and ‘accidentally’ elbowed Sasha a few times until he quit complaining.

Crosby was wearing 28 for the tournament, because Carter had 9. He had grown some; he didn’t look quite so undersized. Whenever he was on the ice, Zhenya found himself leaning forward, forearms braced on his knees, tongue pressed hard against the roof of his mouth to keep himself from calling out. Crosby was good, Jesus Christ he was so good, surely he had an extra set of eyes. He was faster: not scary fast but nothing to sneeze at. Zhenya couldn’t look away.

The game was a bloodbath, 7-2. Crosby took four shots in the third and finally one of them went in, only a few seconds before the end of the game, and Zhenya was on his feet without meaning to be, shouting along with the crowd, thrilled by the game and by seeing Crosby in person, even better than Zhenya had hoped he might be.

“Cheering for the enemy?” Sasha asked him.

“Fuck off, don’t you get excited about good hockey anymore?” Zhenya said, but he dropped back into his seat, his face heating. 

“Sasha’s so jaded now,” Sema said in an undertone. “An old man. Very boring.”

“I heard that,” Sasha said.

On the ice, the Canadians were lined up to congratulate their goalie. Zhenya wanted to face Canada in the gold medal game and _win_ , he wanted to beat Crosby here and prove that Russia was good enough. Maybe he would shake Crosby’s hand on the ice, maybe they would run into each other after a game, and Zhenya would—

Well, what? He knew four words of English: yes, no, hello, hockey. What would he do, hug the guy?

In the end, none of his foolish dreams came to fruition. Russia went out in the quarterfinals, and Canada lost the gold medal in a knuckle-biter against the US. Zhenya was on a plane the next morning, back to Moscow with the team and then home to Magnitogorsk. If he wanted to face Crosby, it would have to wait another year.

He sat beside Sema on the flight back. They played cards in silence. From the way Sema kept reaching for his pocket, Zhenya thought he badly wanted a cigarette. That helped him, to see that Sema wasn’t unaffected by their loss. 

“You played well,” Sema said at last, his eyes still on his hand of cards. “The coaches were impressed.”

“So did you,” Zhenya said, staring at his own cards to conceal the warm glow Sema’s words lit in the pit of his belly. He was so glad that Sema liked him.

“One day we’ll play in the NHL together,” Sema said, in that awful way he had, like bad luck wasn’t real.

Talking about something was a sure way to prevent it from ever happening. Zhenya wouldn’t do anything to hurt his chances. Sema wouldn’t tell, but God was always listening.

“Maybe,” Zhenya said.

\+ + +

The next year, his next chance, he was eighteen, and he had been drafted by the Penguins, and he thought about that all during the long day of travel from Moscow to Amsterdam to Minneapolis to Grand Forks, in some place called North Dakota that he’d never heard of. This would be his life soon, in the NHL, in a year or two: the long transatlantic flights, and the dull flat sounds of English all around him. Maybe his father was right, and he wasn’t ready yet.

North Dakota was snowy, featureless, and cold. The landscape reminded him of Magnitogorsk, a little, with the huge expanse of the open plains, only without the mountains to break up the horizon, or the smokestacks jammed into the earth, venting the heat of it. On the bus into town from the airport, Zhenya watched the blank snow-covered fields scroll past and wondered what Pittsburgh looked like.

Sema had aged out of World Juniors, and Zhenya was stuck with Sasha for company now. “Roommates,” Sasha said brightly, pushing past Zhenya into their hotel room.

“You’re going to snore and fart all night, I won’t sleep a wink, and we’ll be out in the quarterfinals again,” Zhenya said. “They should have put me with Khudobin.”

Sasha grinned and flopped down on the bed closer to the door. “We’ll have a great time, Malych. Don’t look so grim.”

“I’d have a way better time if I didn’t have to look at your face,” Zhenya said sourly. Sasha grinned harder.

Zhenya wanted to win, and he wanted to play Crosby. The Canadian lineup was intimidating, and Russia was maybe not so intimidating that year, but—well, they would do what they could. 

“The Canadians are worried,” Sasha said to him during warmups before their first game, and pointed up into the stands. The Canadian team was seated in a cluster, all of them wearing their matching track suits, and Zhenya couldn’t tell if Crosby was with them, but surely he was.

“They’re here to watch you,” Zhenya said.

“Yeah, the number two draft pick is of no interest to them whatsoever,” Sasha said, rolling his eyes.

“Fuck off,” Zhenya muttered. It was nothing—coming second. Someone had to be number two, and it had been Zhenya, through chance or luck. He left Sasha there and skated a few laps around the rink, doing some spins because it helped to loosen up his ankles and hips, and not at all because he wanted Crosby to notice his skating. 

They lost that game to the US, but they won every other game in the preliminary round and earned a place in the semifinals. On New Year’s Eve, he and Sasha snuck out of the hotel, made an illicit trip to McDonald’s, and then stuffed themselves silly while they watched the show in Times Square, waiting for the ball to drop.

“I could be drunk right now, if I were in Moscow,” Sasha said. He crammed a couple of fries in his mouth and wiped his fingers on the bedspread. 

“Too bad you’re not in Moscow,” Zhenya said. Sasha had taken off his shirt as soon as they got back to their room. He had more hair on his chest than Zhenya probably ever would, and a thin line of hair running down the midline of his belly until it disappeared into his shorts.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Sasha asked, squinting at him sidelong.

“I can’t figure out why you’re so ugly,” Zhenya said, and dodged the fries Sasha threw at him.

Two days later, they beat the US, decisively, in the semifinals. “One more game,” Coach Bragin told them in the locker room afterward: the gold medal game, and finally Zhenya would have the chance to play Crosby, three years after Genya showed him that grainy footage in a back room at the rink.

The Canadians were all at the fifth-place Sweden-Finland game the next day. Sasha, who had been named captain and took his responsibilities very seriously, seated them a few rows behind the Canadians, in a deliberate power move that Zhenya had to admire. The Canadians turned around en masse to stare at them. Grisha Shafigulin, sitting to Zhenya’s right, raised his hand in a tentative wave.

Sasha leaned around Zhenya to smack at Grisha’s hand. “You idiot, pretend you don’t see them.”

Zhenya ignored the ensuing bickering. He was looking for Crosby, and after a moment found him toward the rear of the group, seated between two teammates Zhenya couldn’t recognize without the context of a sweater number. He thought one of them might be Bergeron. Crosby had turned back around, but he had his head turned to the side, talking to whoever the guy was who wasn’t Bergeron. He was two years younger than most of the guys on his team, and he looked it, soft-chinned and still pretty short. He would never be a big guy. He didn’t need to be. He was still better than all the rest of them.

Grisha and Sasha were still going at it. Zhenya wished he had sat at the end of the row beside Yasha Rylov, who he barely knew and who wouldn’t clutch at him or involve him in any slap-fights. As he contemplated moving, Crosby turned around again, and Zhenya didn’t look away fast enough. Their eyes met.

“Zhenya, he’s staring at you!” Grisha said.

Zhenya ducked his head down, his cheeks burning. Nobody had ever hailed him as the next Gretzky, but he had to admit, privately, that Crosby probably knew who Evgeni Malkin was. That didn’t mean Crosby recognized him off the ice, though. Zhenya was just some weird Russian guy who couldn’t keep his eyes to himself.

“Stare him down!” Sasha said. “Terrify him! He’ll piss his pants on the ice—”

“That seems really unlikely,” Zhenya said. He risked another glance. Crosby was still looking, but when they made eye contact again, he turned around and sank down in his seat.

It was an exciting game. Finland tied with fifty seconds left in the third and took Sweden to overtime. Zhenya tried to pay attention, but he kept getting distracted by Crosby turning around to look at him. Crosby stood up at the first intermission and spent a solid five minutes standing there talking to Bergeron or whoever it was before he went off at last to take a leak, and he snuck glances at Zhenya the whole time. 

Zhenya thought about going to say something to him, but his half-hearted efforts at studying English had only increased his four-word vocabulary to forty words. _Good hockey_ , he could say, and then what? Crosby would reply in some way, and Zhenya would stare at him dumbly, or have to ask Sasha to translate, and either scenario seemed humiliating. 

“I’m going back to the hotel,” he said to Sasha, when the game was over and everyone was still sitting around letting their jaws flap. He was all out of sorts and didn’t know why.

“Whatever,” Sasha said carelessly, and barely glanced at Zhenya as he left.

The hotel was only a kilometer and a half away, but the weather was so bitingly cold that Zhenya climbed into one of the cabs loitering outside the arena. “Hilton,” he said, and the driver said a few things that Zhenya couldn’t understand, but he pulled away from the curb and headed in the general direction of the hotel, so there was at least some chance that Zhenya wouldn’t die in this frozen wasteland.

He would play Crosby tomorrow. Maybe Russia would lose, but maybe they wouldn’t. He would meet Crosby in the handshake line either way, and maybe Crosby would be upset. Maybe Crosby would cry, and thinking about that gave Zhenya a tangled-up feeling that he didn’t want to consider too closely.

“— — — — —,” the cab driver said.

“No English,” Zhenya said. The driver shrugged and turned on the radio.

Crosby didn’t cry: he won. Instead it was Zhenya crying alone on the ice, kneeling with his helmet off, his silent teammates arrayed around him as the audience screamed for Canada. After the agonizing wait through the individual awards and receiving their medals, Zhenya couldn’t even bring himself to meet Crosby’s eyes in the handshake line. 

“We’ll win at Worlds,” Sasha said in the locker room afterward. His right arm was tucked inside his jersey, hanging limply at his side. He had spent the entire awards ceremony shuffling around the ice in his sneakers. And still he was already thinking of the next chance for victory, when Zhenya could think only of this defeat. 

“Maybe they won’t ask me to play at Worlds,” Zhenya said. He tore open the straps of his shin guards with a satisfying rip of Velcro.

Sasha scoffed. “Of course they’ll ask you to play.”

“We’ll see,” Zhenya said, and dropped his shin guards on the floor.

The Canadians were at the airport the next morning, waiting for their own puddle jumper back to Minneapolis, and on from there to wherever. Some of them were wearing their medals. They had probably been awake all night, celebrating. Sasha and Zhenya had been asleep well before midnight.

Crosby wasn’t wearing his medal, but he looked pretty fucking happy anyway. They were all happy, and they deserved to be: they had played well. They earned it.

“He’ll be first pick,” Sasha said.

“Yeah,” Zhenya said. He wondered where Crosby would go.

\+ + +

Zhenya scored twelve points in his first season with Magnitka, and thirty-two during his second, and by a few months into the third, he thought there was a chance he would manage a point per game.

He was chosen as the league’s best player for October. “See,” his father said, smiling over the news, “it’s good you stayed for another year. Now Velichkin will see that you’re ready for the NHL. There won’t be any hard feelings. They’ll let you out of your contract, you’ll see.”

“Maybe,” Zhenya said. He was far less sanguine. Rashnikov, the team’s owner, wanted the league championship again, and he expected Zhenya to deliver it to him—if not this year then the next. He didn’t think it would be so easy to leave.

But all of that was a distant concern to him that fall, when he was playing the best hockey of his life, and his good friend Kolya Kulemin had finally made it up from the farm team and was playing on Zhenya’s wing, and also he was in love for the first time.

He had met Kristina after a tournament in Ufa the previous summer. She was a law student there, and Ufa was close enough to seem convenient but far enough that his schedule prevented him from seeing her at all that season. But they talked a lot, first as friends and then as something more, and then they went on vacation together in Turkey over the summer, and after that she was his girlfriend. It was a huge relief, because he had wondered a little, maybe—

But there was nothing to worry about. Kristya was beautiful and hilarious and three years older than him, and still she wanted him, for some unknowable reason. She didn’t even care that Zhenya had still been a virgin at almost nineteen, which he had found unspeakably mortifying until she smiled and ran a finger down his chest and said, “That means I can teach you.”

“Kristya,” Zhenya said, his mouth almost too dry to speak, and she laughed at him and went up on her knees and sank down and—

That was his first time, in the little house they had rented near the beach, with the windows open and the gauzy curtains stirring in the warm breeze. He had done other things with girls, but never this, and it was so good, better than he had imagined, Kristya so soft and hot above him and around him, holding him down on the bed. Zhenya came much faster than he thought was probably defensible, but Kristya only kissed him and guided his head down between her thighs and showed him how to eat her out the way she wanted, slow and very wet, stroking her with the broad flat of his tongue.

In the fall she moved to Magnitogorsk, into an apartment Zhenya rented for her. That fall was hockey and Kristya, and he was glad, mostly, that he wasn’t in Pittsburgh, for Kristya and for the Olympics, and for the good hockey he was playing, this chance to prove himself worthy. 

Of course he wondered sometimes if he had made the right choice. Crosby was lighting the NHL on fire, silencing everyone who had wondered if he would live up to his potential, and Zhenya could have been there with him, if he were better or braver.

Barry sent him some highlights via Genya, a few months in. Zhenya had a big TV now, and a DVD player, but he still liked to sit on the floor to be close to the screen, and his mother still scolded him for it.

“You’ll ruin your eyes, Zhenechka,” she said, “and then where will you be? You can’t play hockey if you’re blind.”

“Nobody’s ever gone blind from watching TV,” he said absently, most of his brain dedicated to watching Crosby on the breakaway, shaking off an attempted check, and going five-hole with a perfect wrister. 

“You’ll be the first,” his mother said, and his father laughed and said, “Zhenya’s never been happy to be average.”

He felt average most of the time. He had been second in points on the team the year before, and this year he would probably be first, but still he couldn’t shake the deep fear that he was nothing special. It lay hidden within him like a thready mat of fungus, from time to time fruiting malignantly above the surface. Crosby was thriving in Pittsburgh, but Zhenya might fail. He wouldn’t be the first Russian player to find the NHL inhospitable.

“Of course it’s scary,” Kristya said, when he voiced some of those thoughts to her. “Moving to a different country? I would be scared.” They were lying together in her bed in her apartment in the dark, naked after sex, and Zhenya felt bare enough and safe enough to tuck his face against her neck and say what was on his mind. 

“Sasha Ovechkin did it,” he mumbled. He slung his arm over her waist and gripped her hip, his thumb on the ridge of bone and his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her ass. Maybe they would go again.

“I’m sure he was scared,” Kristya said. “You should ask him.”

Zhenya would never admit fear to Sasha. “You could come with me. To Pittsburgh.”

She stroked his hair for a few moments before she responded. “I don’t think we need to worry about that yet.” She gave his hair a gentle tug. “Come here, come and kiss me.”

Zhenya was a fast learner, and dedicated to his task. He brought Kristya off twice, with his hands and then his dick, and she fell asleep on his chest, breathing soft and shallow. Zhenya lay awake for a while and thought about all of the things he couldn’t know, the great inscrutable bulk of the future. It never drew closer. By the time you were inside it, it had become the present. It was always in the distance, somewhere up ahead.

\+ + +

He told himself for months that he wouldn’t make the team for the Olympics. There were so many good players, and Zhenya was just some asshole who couldn’t even make it out of the Superleague. Nineteen was young for the Olympics, he hadn’t acquitted himself spectacularly at Worlds, and he expected nothing; he didn’t expect a phone call.

But the phone call came, from Krikunov, the head coach of the men’s national team. “Yes, of course,” Zhenya said, “thank you, it’s an honor,” and ended the call to find both of his parents staring at him expectantly.

“Well?” his father said. 

“Well, I’m going to Turin,” Zhenya said, and his mother leaped from her chair and crossed the room to kiss his face until he squirmed away from her.

He flew to Moscow to meet the rest of the team, and from there to Turin. He knew Seryozha Gonchar, of course, after the lockout, and Sasha, and he had played with some of the guys at Worlds—Datsyuk, Kovalchuk, Kovalev, and what was his life that Pasha Datsyuk shook his hand in the airport and said, “Good to see you again, Malych.”

Zhenya stuttered out some pitiful reply and had to deal with Sasha smirking at him until they boarded. “Oh, _Pasha_ ,” Sasha said, “your hockey, it’s _so good_ —”

“Fuck off,” Zhenya said. “You think you’re a big deal now that you’re in the NHL? I’ll short sheet your bed every night.”

“That sounds terrible for team unity,” Sasha said.

Turin was two time zones behind Moscow, and even after the bus ride into the city from the airport and the slow mess of getting their credentials and finding their accommodations in the Olympic Village, it was only early afternoon. The skiing and whatnot was up in the mountains, but the hockey arena was in Turin proper, a few kilometers to the south of the city center. Sasha talked Zhenya into taking a bus to some church on a hill overlooking the river, and from that height they could see the long snow-capped crest of the Alps in the distance, combed up from the earth like stiff tufts of meringue.

They had five days before their first game. There was practice every day, but otherwise they spent a lot of time hanging out at their dorm or exploring the city. Sasha used his English like a crowbar, bashing away with great enthusiasm, and he dragged Zhenya all over Turin. Sasha was exciting, and he made Turin seem exciting instead of intimidatingly foreign.

“It’s Italy! It’s the Olympics! I hope you’re at least planning to get laid,” Sasha said.

“I have a girlfriend,” Zhenya said, because he and Kristya were on the rocks by then, but Zhenya wasn’t a cheater.

“Is that your nickname for your right hand?” Sasha asked, and dodged aside, laughing, when Zhenya raised his fist.

“His English is good,” Seryozha said, when he and Zhenya were alone for an early lunch in the cafeteria. “He’s worked hard on it.” He took a bite of his pasta and raised his eyebrows. “You might want to think about doing some of that yourself.”

“I am,” Zhenya said. “I’ve studied.” He had studied a little. He knew fifty words now.

Seryozha said something in English. It was a muddle of words; Zhenya couldn’t pick anything out. He stared blankly, feeling foolish. “Exactly,” Seryozha added in Russian.

“You shouldn’t talk so fast,” Zhenya muttered.

“Don’t you want to be a Penguin?” Seryozha asked. “The team’s waiting for you.”

“What’s it like, playing with Crosby?” Zhenya asked. The question had been burning in him for six months, ever since the draft.

Seryozha shrugged. “He’s excellent. They’ll try to make him captain before long. He isn’t ready for it. Too young. He doesn’t have the room yet. But he will soon. He’s annoying. But I like him.” With that proclamation, Seryozha took another bite of pasta.

“Annoying?” Zhenya said.

“Talks too much,” Seryozha said. “Nobody wants to take advice from a kid half his age.” He grinned. “He needs a rookie to boss around.”

“Maybe,” Zhenya said.

He asked Sasha about it, too: not about Crosby, because what did Sasha know about that, but about the NHL, and living in America. 

“It’s good,” Sasha said. They were lying on their beds in their dorm room, lazing around after practice. The beds were too short; Zhenya’s feet hung off the end. “It’s the same in the big ways, but different in the small ways, and that’s what gets you, you know? It’s safer. People smile too much. I like it.”

“I don’t know enough English,” Zhenya admitted to the ceiling.

“That’s what you have Gonchar for,” Sasha said. “Come on, you aren’t going to waste away playing for Magnitka for the rest of your life, are you? Don’t you want to play in the NHL?”

“Of course I want that,” Zhenya said. Last year he had been happy playing for Magnitka, working on his game, getting ready—preparing. Then Crosby was drafted, and this year, all he could think about was how he could be in Pittsburgh, too. But— “What if I’m not ready?”

Sasha sat up and frowned at him. “What the fuck? What’s wrong with you? Why do you think you aren’t ready?”

“Maybe it’s best if I stay in Russia another year,” Zhenya said. His father didn’t want him to leave, and—maybe he was right. Pittsburgh was a long way from Magnitogorsk.

Sasha watched him for a moment. “It’s true that you won’t be the best player in the NHL. How could you be, with me in the league—”

“You’re unbearable,” Zhenya said.

“—but if all you want is to be the best, you can stay in the Superleague and always wonder how you might have done in the NHL.” 

His words hit their mark. Zhenya rubbed his hands over his face. 

“Who’s been telling you that you aren’t ready?” Sasha asked.

His father. His agents. And Metallurg’s management, and Zhenya knew they had a vested interest in keeping him with the team, but it was difficult for him to ignore their words of caution. Maybe they were right, and he needed more time.

“Well, I have a contract,” he said.

“So what?” Sasha said. “Contracts can be broken. You just need the right agent. Mine is great, I can give you his number. He’ll get you to the US.”

“I’ll think about it,” Zhenya said.

There was no medal for any of them in Turin: not gold, and not even the consolation prize of bronze. But Zhenya thought he hadn’t played poorly. He would be able to hold his head up when he went home, at least.

“Maybe I’ll play you in the NHL next year, hey kid?” Pasha said to him, when they parted ways in Moscow.

“Maybe,” Zhenya said.

\+ + +

Crosby was at Worlds in Latvia that May. Zhenya watched Canada lose the bronze medal game to Finland in a brutal shutout, and that night he said to Sasha, “Give me your agent’s name.”

Sasha grinned. “You’ve decided, then?”

“I want to play for the Penguins,” Zhenya said. He wanted to play with Crosby.

\+ + +

All of his plans went to shit in the end. Metallurg wouldn’t let him go. He stayed up the whole night after he signed the new contract with the team, exhausted but unable to sleep, feeling his dream dwindle away from him, vanishing like steam dissipating into the summer air. Next year, Velichkin had promised him, but when the next year came they would force him to sign another contract, and Zhenya wasn’t strong enough to stand up to them. A man needed a backbone to make it in the NHL, and Zhenya was a spineless boy. The Penguins were better off without him.

His thoughts went on like that the whole night through. Finally when the sun rose he got out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen, the kitchen in his parents’ house that he had bought for them. There would be trouble for them with the team, maybe, if he left now. But he couldn’t stay. His dark night had forged a hard resolve in his gut, beaten out of guilt and shame into an iron determination. He wouldn’t be manipulated.

He made a cup of tea and considered the time difference. It was early evening where Barry was, in Vancouver. He made the call.

“JP, I signed a contract,” he said, and Barry listened as Zhenya told him the whole story, only interrupting a few times to clarify, because his Russian was good but not great.

“Well,” Barry said, when Zhenya was done, and sighed. “What do you want?”

“Get me out,” Zhenya said, and suddenly he was on the wild edge of emotion, gasping, nearly sobbing, “get me out, get me out, please—”

“Okay, Evgeni,” Barry said, so gently. “It’s okay.”

 

### The Steel City

The plane landed in Pittsburgh in the early evening. They came around from the east, circling around to get in position for the runway, and passed over downtown, the skyscrapers and the late light glinting off the rivers. Zhenya felt squeezed out like a sponge after so many hours in the air, but he leaned across Barry and Olya, his interpreter, to peer out the window. This city was going to be his home.

“Dinner tonight with Lemieux,” Barry said to him as they waited at the luggage carousel for Zhenya’s gear bag to come down the chute. The bald top of Barry’s head gleamed beneath the fluorescent lights. Zhenya was zoning out on it a little, but Barry’s words snapped him back to attention.

“Dinner with—are you serious?” He glanced down at his jeans and sweatshirt. He didn’t have any nice clothes—only what he had packed to take to Finland. “I can’t meet Lemieux like this.”

“I loan you a shirt,” Barry said. “It’s okay. Nobody care.” He shook his head, and said something to Olya in English, a few long sentences that Zhenya didn’t even attempt to follow.

Olya nodded along until he was done, and then she said, “JP says that everyone understands your situation. They’re happy that you’re here. Nobody would care if you showed up to dinner in sweatpants.”

Zhenya wanted to protest that it was _Mario Lemieux_ , who not only was a legendary hockey player but also owned the Penguins, and it was important to make a good first impression. But Barry knew very well who Mario Lemieux was, and if he didn’t think Zhenya needed to dress up, Zhenya would simply have to trust him.

“Who else will be there?” he asked.

Barry shrugged. “Lemieux wife and kids, Gonchar, Shero. Crosby.”

Zhenya’s stomach turned inside out. “Crosby’s going to be there?”

“He lives with them,” Olya said.

“I need a shirt,” Zhenya said, his face stiff with terror. “I need a tie. I can’t show up in jeans.” Not to meet _Crosby_. 

Barry sighed, but he produced a shirt and a tie from his own luggage, and Zhenya went into the bathroom to change in a stall. The shirt was too big in the shoulders and the waist. Zhenya stuffed the tails into his jeans and folded the back in on itself to make it a little less voluminous. 

He considered his reflection in the vast expanse of the mirror lining the wall behind the row of sinks. He had the bathroom to himself aside from a pair of silent feet in the stall furthest from the door. He looked tired, and he needed a haircut. He had landed, wheels down: Pittsburgh.

Zhenya had of course been to the US before, and he had spent almost three weeks in LA, acclimating and working on his tan, but still it was disorienting to listen to Barry talk to their driver and have no idea what was being said. Barry could be taking him to the moon, for all he knew. He couldn’t read any of the signs lining the highway as they left the airport. He was helpless, and dependent. 

He hadn’t thought of home much since he left Magnitogorsk—hadn’t let himself think of it—but suddenly he missed his parents with such a brutal painful longing that he had to turn his head toward the window so Olya wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

He had made his choice. He was here now.

Barry talked more to the driver. Olya leaned over and said, “We’re early for dinner. We’re going to drive downtown first, so you can get a look at the city.”

Zhenya managed a smile. Olya had been his lifeline since she and Barry met him at the airport in Helsinki. She was about his mother’s age, and she didn’t remind him much of his mother—she was more serious, and much more glamorous, with her sleek pencil skirts and her neatly bobbed silver hair—but she made him feel that he was being looked after. 

They drove toward the city. Zhenya remembered Sasha telling him that the big things were the same but the small things were different, which he hadn’t totally understood at the time; but now, a seasoned expatriate with those three weeks in LA under his belt, he thought he knew what Sasha had meant. The cars were different. Drivers didn’t honk as much. Even the trees along the side of the highway were different. He was on a new continent. He had entered a different life.

The car drove through a long tunnel. They emerged on the other side on a bridge crossing over a river, and there was the city ahead of them, the buildings all lit up as dusk turned into night. Zhenya felt his chest swell with something as big as the ocean he’d waded in in LA: something shining and limitless. He was here.

“You like?” Barry asked from the passenger seat.

“Yeah,” Zhenya said, and had to swallow around the knot in his throat before he could manage another word. “Yeah, I like it.”

\+ + +

They arrived at Lemieux’s house after dark. Zhenya gaped out the window as the car pulled into the drive. Lit by floodlights, the red brick mansion looked like a cathedral, or a castle—like the castle in Hämeenlinna he and Sema had been disappointed in, all those years ago. Zhenya was no slack-jawed child, he had dealt with rich men before—Rashnikov, who owned Magnitka, was a billionaire many times over—but Lemieux wasn’t simply rich, he was _Lemieux_ , and Zhenya took a few fortifying breaths before he followed Olya out of the car and up the steps to the house.

They were waiting for him at the front door: Lemieux and a blonde woman who was probably his wife. Zhenya discreetly wiped his hands on his pants. His heart pounded. Maybe he _was_ a little bit of a slack-jawed child.

Barry shook hands and introduced Olya, and then it was Zhenya’s turn to be beckoned forward. Barry said a bunch of things that included Zhenya’s name. Lemieux smiled.

Zhenya shook Lemieux’s hand, and the blonde woman’s, and hoped he didn’t look as terrified as he felt. “I’m please to meet,” he said. Was that right? Had he said the words correctly? He had practiced on the plane, silently mouthing phrases to himself from the little book Olya had given him, but what had seemed simple then was impossible now. 

“— — — —,” Lemieux said. “— — — — — — —.”

“He’s very happy to meet you at last,” Olya said to Zhenya. “He hopes you aren’t too tired from the flight. The woman is his wife, Nathalie. Everyone else is inside.”

Lemieux stepped aside, still smiling, and held the door open for them to come inside the house.

The first person Zhenya saw was Gonchar, who came forward to shake his hand and then, to Zhenya’s pleased surprise, pull him into a brief hug. “You’ve had an adventure, my friend. I’m glad you here.”

“Thank you,” Zhenya said, “for offering—”

“We’re happy to have you,” Seryozha said firmly. “Ksusha is home with Natasha, otherwise she would be here to greet you as well. But you’ll see her later tonight.” He clapped Zhenya on the shoulder and released him.

Zhenya was introduced to Shero, a gray-haired man in a suit, and all four of the Lemieux children, whose names Zhenya forgot as soon as they were told to him. And then—

“Hi,” Crosby said, smiling uncertainly, maybe a little shyly, his hands deep in his pockets. His dark hair curled behind his ears and at his nape. He extracted one hand and offered it to Zhenya. “— — — —,” he said, and then glanced at Olya and said, slowly, “Welcome to Pittsburgh.”

“Thank you,” Zhenya said, and shook his hand. His own hand was trembling slightly. He hoped Crosby wouldn’t notice.

Crosby had a firm grip and a weak chin, a white, toothy smile. He said something else that Zhenya couldn’t follow. He released Zhenya’s hand and immediately stuffed it back into his pocket. 

Watching him, Zhenya experienced a nauseating sideways tilt of disorientation. He had left Russia for this teenager in an oversized shirt and pleated khakis.

What did he feel? Was he nervous? Why was his heart beating so quickly?

Crosby’s smile wavered and then steadied, fixed in place like it was trapped in amber. 

“He says he’s looking forward to playing with you,” Olya said.

“Thank you,” Zhenya said again. 

Dinner was filet mignon and lobster, rich food in a rich house owned by a rich man. Zhenya drank too much wine. He was seated between Olya and Seryozha, a safe bubble of Russian, but even so he felt overwhelmed by the rapid flow of conversation, too fast for Olya to translate all of it, the children’s loud voices and Crosby laughing at the other end of the table. 

He couldn’t understand anyone. From time to time a single word would surface from the undifferentiated noise, like a fish leaping from the roiling churn of a river. He heard _hockey_ a few times, and people’s names, and the name of the arena. He knew they were speaking a language, but as the meal went on he couldn’t shake the absurd feeling that everyone was babbling nonsense syllables to fuck with him. He and Denis had done that to their father once, as children, and laughed and laughed when he played along. It didn’t seem very funny now.

After dinner there was dessert, and then a tour of the public areas of the house, Lemieux’s wood-paneled study with all the memorabilia of a famed career. Zhenya paused to study a picture of Lemieux and Jagr with the Cup, both of them in their jerseys, and Lemieux doubled back and smiled at him and said, “— — — — — — — —.”

Olya said, “He says, maybe that will be you someday.”

Crosby, lingering nearby, gave Zhenya a tentative smile. They were all smiling, everyone in the room, looking at Zhenya and Crosby and dreaming big dreams, the same dreams that had pried Zhenya out of Magnitogorsk and launched him halfway around the world. Zhenya knew what was expected of him, him and Crosby together, and why not? Why couldn’t they? 

“Yes,” he said in English, watching Crosby’s face, and saw the moment when Crosby’s smile turned real.

\+ + +

Olya and Barry went to a hotel downtown, and Zhenya went home with Seryozha, to his big white house in the hills not too far from Lemieux’s. Seryozha’s daughter was asleep by the time they arrived, but his wife, Ksenia, came out to greet them. Zhenya had met her a few times during the lockout, and she kissed him on both cheeks and smiled at him warmly and said, “I’m so glad you’ve made it at last.”

They had set aside a room for him at the rear of the house, tucked away in an addition that served as a guest suite. “You’ll have some privacy here,” Seryozha said, leading him past the kitchen and down a short flight of steps. “Although I can’t promise that you won’t ever find Barbie dolls sleeping in your bed.” 

The bed was pushed up beneath the windows, big and soft-looking, draped in a dark comforter and piled high with pillows. There was a desk with a chair, and a TV on top of a chest of drawers. Someone, probably Ksusha, had set cut flowers in a vase on the nightstand, orange and red African daisies. A door in one wall led into a bathroom, and opposite from that was a pair of French doors that probably led out into the yard. Zhenya couldn’t tell for sure in the darkness. 

The thick carpet muffled his steps as he made a circuit of the room and set his bags down at the foot of the bed. He turned to see Seryozha and Ksusha both smiling at him from the doorway. 

“There are towels in the bathroom,” Ksusha said. “Please let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

“No,” Zhenya said. The wine and the long day and the late hour were taking a toll. He felt overcome by their kind welcome. “Thank you. This is perfect.”

“We’re happy to have you as long as you’d like to stay,” Seryozha said. He set one hand on Ksusha’s shoulder. 

“I’ll find an apartment soon,” Zhenya said. He didn’t plan to burden them with his presence for more than a few months.

“As long as you’d like,” Seryozha said firmly.

Zhenya woke in the morning when his door creaked open. For a brief moment, he couldn’t remember where he was. Not in his hotel room in LA, and not in his house in Magnitogorsk. He turned over and saw the flowers beside the bed. Right: Pittsburgh. The little girl peering at him from the doorway was certainly Seryozha’s daughter.

“Good morning,” he said. Her eyes widened, and she backed away into the hall and disappeared.

They were all three in the warm open kitchen when Zhenya ventured out, Seryozha at the table with the little girl, and Ksusha yawning at the stove in her bathrobe, frying eggs in a pan. The house was older construction and reminded Zhenya a little of the house he had bought for his parents, but the kitchen had been renovated recently and seemed modern and bright and too clean. Zhenya missed the ornate clutter of home.

He stood awkwardly at the threshold. He had gotten dressed, but the rest of them were still in their pajamas, and he felt foolish about it, but how could he have known? He was a guest here. 

“Good morning, Zhenya,” Seryozha said, beckoning him in. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yes, please,” Zhenya said, smiling at Ksusha as she murmured a greeting. He didn’t know what to do. Should he sit down? Was he expected to serve himself? This wasn’t his home, and he and Seryozha were friendly acquaintances but not friends, and Ksusha he barely knew. He had been shy with strangers his whole life, and in the past year or two he had thought he was finally beginning to outgrow it, but he felt as shy and uncertain now as he remembered feeling a decade ago.

“My name is Natalie Sergeyevna,” Seryozha’s daughter announced, apparently having overcome her own shyness. “But you can call me Natasha.” Her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail and tied off with a pink ribbon, a little lopsided, like maybe she had slept in it.

Zhenya sat at the table. He didn’t have much experience with children, but Seryozha was smiling at him encouragingly. “I’m Evgeni Vladimirovich,” he said, “but you can call me Zhenya.” He was amused by the formality of her introduction: imitating what she had heard adults do, probably.

“Do you like eggs?” Natasha asked.

“Yeah,” Zhenya said. The hard knot in his chest began to unravel, picked apart by Natasha’s innocent excitement. “It’s my favorite thing to have for breakfast.”

Natasha beamed. “Mine too.”

“She says that now,” Ksusha said, coming over to the table holding the frying pan, “but she’ll eat two bites and decide she’s had enough. Would you like two eggs or three?”

“Three, please,” Zhenya said, smiling at her, and picked up his fork.

\+ + +

Seryozha drove him downtown to the arena, where he would sign his contract and suffer through a press conference.

“Olya will be there to translate for you,” Seryozha said, when Zhenya balked at this news. “And you’ll get to skate with some of the team.”

It was an obvious bribe. “Crosby?” Zhenya asked, aware that he was being manipulated, but eager anyway to have a chance to skate with Crosby. 

Seryozha laughed. “Yes, Sid will probably be there.”

Seryozha talked about what would happen over the next few days, and Zhenya tried to pay attention and not feel overwhelmed by the flood of information. Rookie camp opened on Friday; Zhenya would stay in a hotel downtown for the duration, so that Seryozha didn’t have to drive him back and forth. 

“They’ve hired a skating coach for training camp who speaks Russian,” Seryozha said. “He’s from Georgia. He’ll help you. And you’ll start with an English tutor soon. The team is making arrangements.”

“Can’t I just play hockey?” Zhenya muttered. They were nearing the city now, a different route than Zhenya had taken the night before: an endless concrete tunnel with sound barriers on either side, and then the skyscrapers of downtown off to the right as the car crossed over the river. The weather was beautiful, the sun rising to the east into a hazy blue sky. 

Zhenya gawped out the window as Seryozha exited the freeway and navigated to the arena. There it was, rising before them, an enormous silver dome. It looked old and a little run down, and that at least was familiar to Zhenya, who had been playing in Metallurg’s aging arena for his entire life.

“Come on, Zhenya,” Seryozha said. “Let’s go meet your team.”

Seryozha led him through a back door that he opened with a swipe card. The windowless service corridors they walked through were lined with generators, loading equipment, and random stacks of boxes. Seryozha took a sharp left down a short hallway with a door at the end, with the Penguins logo on it, and behind that was the players’ lounge, the walls decorated with pictures of the team, past and present. There was that same picture of Lemieux and Jagr with the Cup, and group photos of the 1991 and 1992 teams, seated on the ice with the Cup shining at the center. 

What would it feel like, to lift the Cup overhead? He had won gold with the junior team a few years ago, in Belarus, and he imagined it would feel like that, only bigger and sharper, a clean joy that would slide through him and leave its mark.

“Come on,” Seryozha said again, but gently, like he knew what Zhenya was thinking.

Seryozha gave him a short tour and then took him into the change room, where they dressed in their base layers. The locker room was across the hall, brightly lit and lined with slatted wooden benches, and reeking faintly of old sweat, that deep funk no amount of ventilation could dispel. 

Everyone was waiting for him there: not the whole team, but a solid dozen. Every face turned to stare as Zhenya and Seryozha entered the room, and Zhenya hung back, nervous with so many eyes on him. Some of the guys smiled at him. Crosby broke into a grin and stood up at his stall, and shifted his weight, and then sat down again; and that made Zhenya even more nervous, because Crosby was excited, and maybe Zhenya would be a disappointment.

Seryozha said some things and gestured to Zhenya, and everyone laughed. “Welcome!” someone called out, in truly abominable Russian, which startled a laugh out of Zhenya, and Seryozha clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Suit up.”

Someone produced a practice jersey for him with the Penguins logo on it. Pulling it on made Zhenya feel, for the first time, that all of this was real. He had really walked away from his team in the Helsinki airport, masked by the confusion at customs. He had really come here, to Pittsburgh. That was really Crosby smiling at him from across the room. He was Zhenya’s teammate now.

As they changed, Seryozha told Zhenya everyone’s names and nicknames, and Zhenya did his best to commit the information to memory. It wasn’t his first time with a new team, but the stakes were higher now, and the names were unfamiliar. Seryozha was the only other Russian, and Zhenya had known that going in, but that part of it seemed real now, too. Seryozha was the only person on the team he could talk to.

Crosby came waddling over in his skates. He smiled at Zhenya and then said a whole bunch of things that made Seryozha laugh and shake his head. “Okay, okay,” Seryozha kept saying, one of the only words in English Zhenya knew, and then he turned to Zhenya and said, “He wants you to know that he’ll help you in any way he can. He says, don’t ever hesitate to ask.” He grinned. “He didn’t say this part, but he’s been _very_ excited about you joining the team.”

Zhenya looked at Crosby, his eager smile, his soft mouth. Zhenya’s heart was pounding again. He held Crosby’s gaze as he said to Seryozha, “Please tell him thank you, and I’m happy to be here.”

Crosby’s smile was so crooked. Zhenya ducked his head and returned his attention to his skate laces.

Changed, ready, they went out to the ice. Zhenya’s stomach fluttered with anxious excitement as he followed Seryozha down the carpeted hallway. Lemieux had played in this arena, and Jagr, Francis and Coffey, and now Zhenya would skate on the same ice, under the same lights. 

The doors at the end of the hall opened onto one corner of the rink, and Zhenya skated out and looked up at the high dome overhead, the Jumbotron, the empty seats that would be full of fans soon. He had made it all this way: to Pittsburgh.

They had enough guys in attendance to run a scrimmage. Zhenya sat it out through a few line changes, watching. This was an informal skate, and none of the coaching staff was there, so he didn’t have to worry too much about misunderstanding instructions; but it was a new team, with a different system, and the ice was smaller, and he felt better to watch for a while, and see how it was done.

Finally Seryozha skated over to him, sweating, and said, “Well? You’re a center. Go center.”

He centered Ouellet and LeClair, whose names he repeated internally to commit them to memory. He had skated a lot in LA and felt fast and good and ready to play, ready for the season. Crosby watched from along the boards, and Zhenya couldn’t resist showing off a little, looping around behind the net and banking in a shot off Fleury, who smacked at Zhenya with his stick. 

“Very impressive,” Seryozha called from the sidelines, and added something in English that made everyone laugh.

Zhenya scowled, because he hated to be teased, and hated it more when he couldn’t understand what was being said. But Crosby was smiling at him, and his expression didn’t look mocking at all.

He had been waiting for Zhenya this whole time, for as long as Zhenya had been waiting to join him.

Hesitantly, Zhenya returned his smile.

Ouellet called something and tapped his stick on the ice. Fleury slid the puck out of the net, and Zhenya caught it on his tape and began again.

\+ + +

He called his parents that night from his laptop. He had spoken with them once while he was in Finland, and several times in LA, borrowing Barry’s phone or Brisson’s. He had kept those calls short, because his mother was worried and his father was disappointed in him and he couldn’t bear their concern. But they talked for a long time that night, more than an hour, and Zhenya told them all about Pittsburgh and Lemieux and the arena and the team.

Zhenya’s father didn’t say much. He was still upset that he hadn’t been told of Zhenya’s plans; he thought Zhenya had behaved childishly, and Zhenya knew he had and was ashamed of himself. But after Zhenya had described his skate with the team and the press conference, his father said, “We’d like to come visit you soon, if that’s okay with you.”

“Yes,” Zhenya said immediately. “I mean—I’ll have to ask the Gonchars. I’m sure they would be happy for you to stay here. Or I’ll get you a hotel—”

“We can figure out the details,” his father said. “Maybe in a month or so, once you’ve had some time to settle in.”

“Sure,” Zhenya said. His parents had attended all of his home games with Magnitka, and he hated to think of going onto NHL ice for the first time without them in the stands. But he was twenty now, a grown man, and he would have to learn to make do in his new life. 

When they ended the conversation, his father hesitated for a moment and then said, “We’re proud of you,” and Zhenya took that assurance to bed with him and down into restful dreamless sleep.

Rookie camp opened a few days later, with medical testing followed by an informal practice in the afternoon. Seryozha drove him to the arena at what felt to Zhenya like the crack of dawn and left him there with his gear bag and his suitcase. He would spend the next four nights in a hotel, with the other rookies.

Olya and Barry were waiting for him in the players’ lounge, along with a very small man Olya introduced as Besa, the Georgian skating coach.

“I’ll be your roommate during training camp,” Besa said, shaking Zhenya’s hand and grinning. He spoke Russian with an accent that Zhenya associated with movie mobsters. It made him seem extremely badass despite his diminutive size. “And your boss on the ice! I hear you’re a good skater, but I’ll have to see for myself.”

“He’s good,” Barry said, “but maybe you make him more good.”

Olya laughed at Zhenya’s expression and said, “Let’s go, your coach wants to meet you.”

He survived rookie camp. It was mostly drills, and he knew a few of those words from the Canadian coach he’d had in Magnitogorsk, his last year there; and he had eyes, and could do what was demonstrated for him. Besa helped him some, but mostly left Zhenya to figure it out. He knew he was the best player at the camp, and most of the people in the stands were there to see him, and they cheered his name when he skated off; so maybe it was okay that he didn’t always know what was going on. The team wouldn’t send him down. He would be in the starting lineup that fall no matter how he performed during camp.

They probably wouldn’t send him down. He was good enough. He belonged in the NHL.

He was probably good enough.

The first day of rookie camp was his last day with Olya and Barry. They went back to Vancouver and left him there alone.

“You have Besa,” Barry told him firmly, “and Gonchar. And—” He said something to Olya in English.

“There’s a man in the front office who speaks Russian,” Olya said. “He’ll serve as your interpreter when you need him.”

“You be fine,” Barry said.

Zhenya fought down every childish protest that he _wasn’t_ fine, he needed Barry there with him, and especially Olya, because he was still too intimidated even to venture out of the hotel on his own. He couldn’t read street signs; he was afraid of getting lost. He had tried to buy coffee in the hotel lobby that morning while Besa was showering and been so flustered by the flood of English the cashier spewed at him that he had gone back upstairs empty-handed, his cheeks burning with frustration and shame. Why hadn’t he studied more last year? He had thought it would be easy to pick up what he needed to know, but his head ached constantly from straining to comprehend what was said to him, and for all his efforts he couldn’t infer speech from sound.

Crosby was in the stands for the second day of camp, and he was in the locker room afterward, dressed in workout shoes and a Penguins T-shirt. He sat down beside Zhenya as Zhenya removed his pads, and offered Zhenya a smile that Zhenya shyly returned.

“You — — — — —,” Crosby said.

Zhenya stared at him, hoping the noises would somehow resolve into words, but nothing came to him. He didn’t know what Crosby had said.

Crosby smiled at him again, and said, very slowly, pausing between each word, “You played good hockey.”

“No. Not good.” Zhenya ducked his head, embarrassed. He hadn’t done very well today; none of his passes had connected the way he wanted them to, and he had missed the puck entirely on one attempted shot on goal. 

“Really good,” Crosby insisted, and after a moment, he leaned in to bump his shoulder against Zhenya’s. 

“— — — — — — — —,” Staal said from the other side of the room, grinning.

Crosby laughed. “— — — —? — — — — — — —.”

One of the other guys said something—Bisson? Bissonay? There were so many names, and half of them were French, full of letters that weren’t pronounced, so that even if Zhenya managed to puzzle through the written name, he couldn’t connect it to the one he heard bellowed on the ice.

He gave up on following the conversation. He returned his attention to his gear and let the shouting and laughter wash over him. His heart throbbed in his chest. Crosby thought he had played well. 

Crosby was at the arena again on the final morning of rookie camp, eating an apple in the lounge when Zhenya and Besa arrived. He jumped to his feet and came over, still chewing, and started talking to Besa. Zhenya looked at the dark hair sticking out from beneath his cap, long and curling at his nape. He was still a teenager, and every hockey fan knew his name.

“Okay,” Besa said finally, and then said to Zhenya, “He’s offered you a ride home after camp’s over. He says it isn’t far out of his way and he’s happy to take you. He’ll call Gonchar and let him know.”

“Oh,” Zhenya said, taken aback. He didn’t really want to spend a silent, awkward half hour in the car with Crosby, but Crosby was smiling at him and Zhenya didn’t feel like he could say no. He scraped together his English and said, “Okay, Crosby, thank you.”

“Sid,” Crosby said. “Please.”

“Sid,” Zhenya said, and Crosby turned slightly pink, which Zhenya found equal parts fascinating and terrible.

When practice was finished, Zhenya changed out of his gear and went to find Crosby—Sid—in the workout room, slowly riding an exercise bike and watching the highlights from an American football game. Zhenya had attended a Steelers game the week before with some of the other rookies and liked it well enough, although he still didn’t really understand the rules. 

“Football?” he asked Sid, gesturing at the TV. “Like?”

Sid wobbled one hand back and forth. “I like baseball.” He gave Zhenya a onceover. “You — — —? — — — — — —.”

Zhenya grimaced apologetically. He didn’t understand. “Sorry.”

Sid smiled at him. “It’s okay.” He hopped off the bike and tilted his head toward the door. Zhenya followed him as he started walking. “Uh, shower?” He mimed scrubbing beneath his armpits and washing his hair.

“Shower,” Zhenya repeated cautiously. He didn’t know if Sid was saying he needed a shower or asking if Zhenya had taken one. “Me, no.”

“Okay, — — — —,” Sid said, and he was speaking slowly and watching Zhenya’s face, but Zhenya simply didn’t know the words.

“Sorry,” he said again, ashamed of himself, so frustrated that he couldn’t even hold a simple conversation with this man who would be his captain soon, from what Seryozha had said.

Sid smiled and patted his shoulder, and Zhenya felt pathetically reassured. Sid wasn’t fed up with him, at least not yet.

He followed Sid into the change room, where Sid opened his locker and stripped off his shirt, and—okay. Zhenya averted his eyes. They were showering. Zhenya needed a shower.

“— — — — — —?” said Fleury, sitting half-dressed at his own stall, and Zhenya got naked and escaped to the showers while Sid was still running his mouth.

They didn’t say much to each other in the car, but it wasn’t awkward the way Zhenya had feared. Sid turned on the radio in the parking lot and hit every preset button in turn, watching Zhenya as the music changed. “You like this?” he asked, and when Zhenya scrunched up his face, changed the station and said, “This?”

“Like,” Zhenya said at last, when he finally recognized something: Justin Timberlake.

Sid laughed. “Yeah? This?”

“Sexy back,” Zhenya said, and Sid grinned and shook his head and put the SUV in reverse.

Sid drove like he knew where he was going, and didn’t ask Zhenya for directions. When he exited the freeway onto a winding, hilly road, he rolled down his window, and the warm breeze whipped his hair into a tangle. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and hummed along with the radio and seemed perfectly content to be giving Zhenya a ride home. 

Zhenya watched him covertly and thought of the first time he had seen Sid, in Finland, almost three years ago now, and how he had only thought at the time of playing _against_ Sid, never with him. The possibility of playing on the same team had never entered his mind. Learning that Sid had been drafted by the Penguins had filled him with some colossal emotion he eventually decided was professional excitement. He would have a better chance of winning the Cup with Sid on his team.

Sid glanced at him, and Zhenya hastily tore his gaze away and stared out the window, his face hot, and then wasn’t sure why he was embarrassed. Why couldn’t he look at Sid? He wasn’t doing anything wrong.

“— — — —,” Sid said, raising his voice to be heard over the radio and the wind, but Zhenya still didn’t understand what he had said.

“Thank you,” Zhenya said to him, when Sid pulled up outside the Gonchar house.

“No —,” Sid said. “— — Thursday.” He smiled so much. He was a friendly guy, dorky, laughed all the time, sang in the showers, earnest and cheerful. Annoying, Seryozha had called him, and that wasn’t quite right, but Zhenya understood that feeling of scratchy irritation, like a tag in a shirt. Nobody should be that kind or welcoming, or smile at Zhenya like that.

“Bye,” Zhenya said, and waved to Sid from the end of the driveway.

The front door opened. Natasha came out, holding a princess wand, and ran a few loops through the grass, streaming ribbons behind her. Seryozha watched her from the stoop and waved at Zhenya. “How was it?”

“Good,” Zhenya said, and was a little surprised to find that he meant it.

\+ + +

On the first day of training camp, Zhenya was summoned to a meeting as soon as he and Seryozha arrived at the arena. A woman Zhenya didn’t recognize led him upstairs to Shero’s office. Lemieux was there as well, and Fletcher, the assistant GM, and Birman, the Ukrainian guy from the front office, who Zhenya had been introduced to during rookie camp.

Zhenya, standing in the doorway and considering the serious faces awaiting him, felt like he was going to throw up. 

“— — — — — — — —,” Lemieux said, and gestured to the empty chairs in front of Shero’s desk.

It took Zhenya too long to understand what was happening. At first he could only hear the terrified rush of blood in ears. He had fucked up, they weren’t happy with his performance, he hadn’t done well during rookie camp, they were going to send him back to Russia—

“What?” he said, distracted now by Birman’s soft accent, and Birman patiently explained it again.

The Russian Hockey Federation had ruled that Zhenya couldn’t play for the Penguins, or in the NHL at all: that he was still under contract with Metallurg. “It’s only an internal ruling,” Birman said, “but we expect a lawsuit.”

Zhenya’s mouth was so dry. “They’re suing?”

Birman said something to Shero, and listened to the response, and then he said to Zhenya, “There are a few other players in your situation. AHL guys. So they’re expecting a lawsuit against the clubs that are involved, not you as an individual.”

That didn’t make Zhenya feel any better at all. “What’s going to happen?”

“The Penguins will take care of it,” Birman said. “You shouldn’t worry. The league will get involved. It’s not something you should spend any time worrying about. They only wanted you to know what’s going on.”

Lemieux smiled at him encouragingly. Shero looked like he had a headache.

“Thank you,” Zhenya said, carefully, in English.

He went downstairs in a daze. Seryozha was in the lounge, talking with a couple of the D-men, who were eating breakfast. He turned away from them when Zhenya came in and said, “What happened?”

“Magnitka,” Zhenya said shortly. “They’re suing.”

Seryozha’s eyebrows drew together. “Zhenya—”

“It’s fine,” Zhenya said, and went on into the change room before Seryozha could question him any further. 

He called his parents that night, to tell them the news. They had gotten word from Genya earlier that day and weren’t surprised by Zhenya’s phone call. “It’s only noise at this point,” his mother said, “but Genya told us he expects they’ll sue.”

“Yeah,” Zhenya said. His heart had been racing since he stepped into Shero’s office that morning, and wouldn’t calm. He didn’t expect to get much sleep. “I hope there won’t, um. Be any problems for you.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” his mother said firmly. “It’s a legal issue, it’s going through the courts. People understand why you did what you did.”

“Do they?” Zhenya asked, because he was pretty sure his father didn’t understand, or maybe he understood, but he certainly wasn’t happy about it. His parents kept insisting there had been no trouble with Metallurg, no repercussions for them, but Zhenya didn’t trust that they were telling the truth, and he was even more worried now, with the Federation involved.

“Focus on hockey,” his father said. “I’m sure the Penguins have good lawyers.”

“I guess,” Zhenya said, “how’s Denis?” and they didn’t talk about lawyers or lawsuits again.

He went to bed that night at his usual time, but sleep wouldn’t come for him, and after a while he got out of bed and pulled on a sweater and went through the French doors to sit on the patio outside his room. September was still summer in Pittsburgh, as warm as Magnitogorsk was in July, but the night air was cool and quiet. To the east, the sky glowed orange from the lights of the city, but Zhenya could still make out a few faint stars overhead. 

Nothing was going the way he had imagined, dreaming every night before bed for all those years. The first day of training camp had been fine; he had scored two goals during the scrimmage, and worked well with Malone, but fine wasn’t good enough. He had to impress the team and the coaching staff, to convince them it was worth it to deal with a silent idiot who couldn’t understand even the most basic of commands. Everything Therrien had said to him was a meaningless rush of noise, no matter how many times Therrien repeated it, no matter how desperately Zhenya strained to understand, his face flaming with the effort and with the shame of his teammates watching him struggle and fail.

And now there was going to be a lawsuit, and maybe Metallurg would win, and Zhenya would have to pack his bags and return to Magnitogorsk in disgrace, to play for a team he had betrayed, and fans he had gravely disappointed. And that would be the end of it for him. He would play for Magnitka until he was too old or injured to play anymore, and always wonder what might have happened if he had only waited one more year.

Zhenya was religious in a vague, habitual way; he went to church, sometimes, for the major holidays, if he could swing it with his hockey schedule. But he prayed now, gripping his pendants in one hand, hunched over in the patio chair, whispering to himself, “Son of God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

\+ + +

His prayers failed him. Five days later, in his very first preseason game, LeClair lost an edge on the shitty wet ice and went into the boards, and Zhenya went with him, upended. He hit the ice hard, at a bad angle, and the sudden, searing pain in his shoulder left no room for doubt.

The despair was worse than the pain. He lay on the ice, winded and hurting, in those endless seconds after the fall, and knew he was finished.

He’d had one period, one assist. And now he was injured, and the team wouldn’t fight a protracted legal battle on behalf of an untried forward who couldn’t even play. Shoulder injuries could take months. His season might be over, and his entire NHL career with it.

Stewart, the head trainer, knelt beside him on the ice, and Melichar. They were both talking to him, but Zhenya had no idea what they were saying. But then Seryozha was there, saying, “Zhenya, your neck?” and Zhenya said, “No, it’s my shoulder,” and heard Seryozha exhale sharply, and say something to Stewart.

He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead. That was nothing. Stewart and Melichar helped him to his feet, and Zhenya skated off, bent over, his left arm dangling at his side. Hot tears filled his eyes, and he blinked furiously, trying to hold them back. He had done everything wrong, and this was his reward for his mistakes. 

Stewart shot him full of lidocaine on the bench, and then he was taken to the hospital for X-rays. The doctor and the assistant trainer who had driven Zhenya talked at great length, and Zhenya sat on the examination table and stared at his shoes and felt the heavy weight of destiny on him. There was nothing he could have done to avoid this. His errors had begun over the summer, when he signed the contract and then reneged, or maybe before that, when he let himself be prideful enough to think he deserved a chance in the NHL.

The hospital had no Russian-speaking interpreters on staff, so Zhenya and the doctor took turns speaking with a woman on the telephone. Zhenya’s shoulder was dislocated; the doctor would put it back into place; Zhenya would have more X-rays back in Pittsburgh the following day, and maybe an MRI. 

He agreed to everything. His shoulder was still numb from the shot, and he felt nothing when the doctor carefully moved the joint back into place, only a strange pulling and then a sudden pop.

He was back in the locker room in time to see the team come off the ice, victorious after beating the Flyers. Zhenya sat at his stall and waited for Seryozha to finish in the showers and tell him what happened next. Across the room, Sid talked to reporters. Armstrong came over and made noises at Zhenya for a while, pointing at his own shoulder and making the exaggerated facial expressions that people seemed to think would help Zhenya understand.

“Okay,” Zhenya said finally, to get Armstrong to leave him alone. “It’s okay.”

He sat with Seryozha on the flight back and tried to think of nothing, to have no thoughts or feelings, to let the world move through him and do what it would, full of its mysteries. But he was no good at patience or fatalism. He wanted to already be inside the future, to know what would happen, and for everything to turn out okay.

“It might not need surgery,” Seryozha said, after a while.

“Maybe,” Zhenya said, and reclined his seat and closed his eyes and pretended to sleep the rest of the way back to Pittsburgh.

\+ + +

That was Wednesday, and his MRI wasn’t until Friday. The intervening time was as bad as the worst of the summer mess with Magnitka, that long sleepless night when he signed the contract. He went to practice with Seryozha in the morning and smiled at everyone and tried to seem as if he were optimistic and unfazed by this turn of events. His shoulder hurt, but the pain was manageable with ibuprofen. But his thoughts went around and around in a grim spiral. Maybe God was punishing him. Maybe this was a sign that he wasn’t ready for the NHL. He should go home for another year, and keep improving his game. Then there wouldn’t be any need for a lawsuit. He could mend fences with Magnitka, and they would be happy for him when he left, in another year, and the fans would forgive him—

Sid skated over, and Zhenya, slumped on the bench with his bad arm folded over his belly, straightened up and forced a smile. “Hi, Sid.”

“Hi,” Sid said. He leaned against the boards and tapped his own shoulder. “— — —? — okay?”

“X-ray,” Zhenya said. At least he was expanding his vocabulary. “Today.”

“Good,” Sid said, smiling. “I — — — — — —.”

Zhenya shrugged his right shoulder. He didn’t understand.

Sid looked around, maybe for Seryozha, who was talking with Savard. He turned back to Zhenya with another smile. “— — — Penguins,” he said, gesturing back and forth between them. “You and me.”

“I wish I knew what you were saying,” Zhenya said in Russian. “I wish I could talk to you.”

“Penguins,” Sid said to him again. He held out his gloved hand. 

Zhenya watched his face, and after a moment, hesitantly, he raised his own fist and bumped it against Sid’s. “Penguins,” he said, because it was true, at least for right now.

Seryozha took him for X-rays after practice, a short drive up a hill to the medical center. Zhenya needed to get a car of his own, so he wasn’t so dependent on Seryozha to cart him around, but maybe he wouldn’t be in Pittsburgh for much longer. 

Seryozha kept glancing at him in the car, and finally said, “At worst it’s six months, if you need surgery. These things heal.”

“That’s my whole season,” Zhenya said.

“There will be other seasons,” Seryozha said, which Zhenya didn’t find comforting at all.

The X-rays confirmed that his shoulder was back in place. He spoke with his parents that night, and they weren’t concerned. He had broken bones before, and had a concussion; a dislocated shoulder was an inconvenience, but nothing to fret about too much. But Zhenya, to his own horror, started _crying_ , and since they were video chatting there was no way for him to pretend that he wasn’t.

“Zhenya!” his mother exclaimed. “Are you in so much pain, sweetheart?”

“I should have stayed with Magnitka,” Zhenya said, and cried into his hands for a while as his parents made concerned noises.

“We’ll come visit you soon,” his mother said, “Zhenechka, don’t cry, it’s all going to be fine,” and his father said, “We’re only waiting on our visas, and then we’ll book plane tickets,” and “I know this is difficult, but of course we’re proud of you,” and Zhenya managed to get himself under control enough to reassure them both that he was fine, really, it had just been a long day, he needed to get some sleep, he would feel better in the morning.

That was his lowest moment. In the morning he had his MRI, and he received the results late that afternoon before the game, sitting in Dr. Burke’s office in the arena, with Seryozha at his side: four to six weeks of rehab, and no surgery.

“That’s it?” Zhenya said, numb, bewildered. He had prepared himself for the worst, and now he was being told that he wouldn’t miss more than the preseason and a handful of regular season games.

“That’s it,” Seryozha said, clapping him on his good shoulder. “Not so bad, huh?”

“Four weeks?” Zhenya said. “Really?”

“Four to six,” Seryozha said, but all Zhenya cared about was that his season wasn’t over.

He didn’t play that night, of course, but he hung out in the locker room while the team got dressed for warmups, and beckoned Sid over when their eyes met. “Seryozha, tell him the news,” he begged, and Seryozha rolled his eyes, already tired of serving as Zhenya’s intermediary with the team, but he said something to Sid anyway, and Sid grinned at him, that stupid grin that creased his whole face and made his eyes disappear.

Zhenya’s stomach felt weird, looking up at Sid’s happy face, like maybe he was seeing something he shouldn’t.

“He says he’s glad to hear it,” Seryozha said, after a number of lengthy sentences from Sid that surely contained more information than that.

Zhenya didn’t care. Sid’s smile told him everything.

“Penguins,” Zhenya said.

\+ + +

Rehab was unpleasant and boring. The team went off to Canada without him for a couple of preseason games, and then off to West Point without him for team-building exercises. Zhenya was on his own for nearly a week, with only Ksusha and Natasha in the house, driving Seryozha’s car to the practice rink each day to work with his physical therapist, and sullenly working on English in the evenings. He didn’t have a tutor yet, but he had been given a workbook, and gently but firmly encouraged to start studying.

When he was home, he spent most of his time in the TV room in the basement, in an effort to give the Gonchars some privacy. Sometimes the cat kept him company, a little gray ball of fluff named Albert. While Seryozha was away, Natasha started coming downstairs to join him. She had a box of toys in one corner, and a dollhouse, and Zhenya was wary at first, because what if she expected him to play with her? But she seemed content to play alone, and Zhenya made sure that whatever he was watching on TV wasn’t inappropriate for children, and he looked over from time to time to check that she hadn’t accidentally swallowed a small object and choked to death. Maybe she was too old for that. Zhenya didn’t really know anything about children.

“I hope she isn’t bothering you,” Ksusha said, when she came looking for Natasha and found her holding a tea party on the ottoman at Zhenya’s feet. “If you’d rather be alone—”

“It’s fine,” Zhenya said, and it was. It was nice to listen to her talk quietly to her stuffed animals. He didn’t mind. He felt lonely almost all the time, even at the rink, surrounded by people he couldn’t talk to. He missed his parents and his friends and his teammates and his dog, and even Denis, who he had nothing in common with beyond some shared genetic material. It was nice to not be alone.

After a few days of that, Natasha came downstairs one afternoon and stood beside the couch, where Zhenya was sprawled out, pretending to study vocabulary flashcards. “Can we watch cartoons?”

“Uh,” Zhenya said. “Sure?”

That was his introduction to American children’s television: brightly-colored, manic, and only a little like the Soviet cartoons Zhenya remembered from his own childhood. Ksusha came down after a while with a basket of dirty laundry and laughed at Zhenya’s mute bewilderment.

“Don’t worry, she doesn’t understand what’s going on any better than you do,” Ksusha said. “She’s only started going to preschool this fall.”

“Oh, good, I’m just as clueless as a four-year-old,” Zhenya said.

Ksusha laughed again. “You’ll learn English together. Natasha can help you, maybe.”

“Zhenya doesn’t speak English?” Natasha asked. “Didn’t he learn at school?”

“Zhenya grew up in Russia, sweetheart,” Ksusha said. “All of his friends spoke Russian. So he has to learn now.”

“I’ll help,” Natasha announced, and after that Zhenya had a study buddy who couldn’t tie her own shoelaces but was very eager to teach him every new word she learned at school. By the time Seryozha returned from West Point, Zhenya could greet him in English and say, “How your trip?”

Seryozha laughed. “I see you’ve been studying.”

“Oh, for hours every day,” Zhenya said. “I’m taking it very seriously.”

“Natusya told him what to say,” Ksusha called from the next room, and Seryozha shook his head at Zhenya and said, “She’s too young to work as your interpreter, you know.”

It was good to have Seryozha back, and the rest of the team, even though Zhenya still wasn’t cleared for practice, and skated alone beforehand. There were guys in the locker room and the weight room, hanging out in the trainers’ room getting treatments, and Zhenya shuffled around in his slides and accepted everyone’s smiles and what he assumed from the tone was friendly chirping. He couldn’t play, and the threat of a lawsuit was still hanging over his head, but he would play soon. His shoulder felt better every day. He was still a Penguin for now.

There were a few days off between the end of the preseason and the start of the regular season. Zhenya had finally gotten his driver’s license, and Seryozha took him to buy a car. It wasn’t the most expensive thing he’d ever purchased—that honor went to his parents’ house—but he still felt pleased and proud as he drove off the lot in his brand new Range Rover.

“You aren’t in Russia anymore,” Seryozha told him, when Zhenya beat him home by a good fifteen minutes. “Don’t get pulled over. They’ll ticket you.”

Seryozha was a fussing old man. Zhenya had been pulled over many times back home and wasn’t worried about it. He knew how to bribe a cop. 

So he had a car, and soon he had a nickname. The guys had all been struggling with his name, pitifully, and with so many variations that Zhenya didn’t notice at first when they all began calling him a new, different thing. But finally Therrien used it on him a few times during a team meeting, when Zhenya was maybe visibly wool-gathering instead of pretending to pay attention, and after that he asked Seryozha about it.

“Geno,” Seryozha said. “One of the PR guys came up with it. They think your name is too hard to say.”

Zhenya scoffed. “It’s not too hard. None of them are trying.”

“You know how hockey players are about nicknames,” Seryozha said. “What’s your alternative? Malky?”

“Sid doesn’t have a nickname,” Zhenya protested.

“Crosby,” Seryozha said. “It’s built in. I’m sorry, my friend. You’re stuck with it now, the guys all like it.”

“ _Geno_ ,” Zhenya said disparagingly.

But Seryozha was right: it was too late, and Zhenya accepted his fate when he went into the weight room immediately after that conversation and was flagged down by Sid, calling to him from an exercise bike: “Hey, Geno!”

Zhenya shuffled over, still grumpy about the Geno revelation, but Sid was smiling at him, sitting up with his hands hanging by his sides, his thighs flexing below the hem of his shorts, and he looked—

“Hi,” Zhenya said.

“Hi,” Sid said, grinning at him. He lifted his cap to rake back his sweaty hair. “You — — — a car?” 

“Yes,” Zhenya said, pretty sure what Sid was asking him. “You look?”

Sid shook his head. “Sarge told me.” Sarge was Seryozha, for some reason, when he wasn’t Gonch. “A Range Rover.”

“Yes,” Zhenya said, smiling partly because of the tufted mess of Sid’s hair, and partly because they were having an actual conversation. Sid was speaking slowly and using simple words, but Zhenya _understood_ him, and was able to reply. His studying was paying off, and it was a good feeling to have, after a long and difficult month. He could make a life for himself here, maybe. Probably.

“— — — — — — —?” Sid asked him, and—well, Zhenya didn’t understand any of that, but he would get there.

“Sorry,” he said.

Sid huffed and smiled at him. “It’s okay. — — learn, eh?”

He _would_ learn, if he stayed—if Magnitka allowed him to stay; if they didn’t sue, or if they sued and lost. He wanted to stay, and play with Sid, and learn to talk with Sid. And everyone else on the team, but—mostly Sid.

Fleury came into the room wearing a smile that Zhenya had already learned meant trouble, and holding a pair of scissors that probably meant someone would be going home sans underwear. He said something to Sid in French, which Zhenya hoped he wasn’t _also_ going to need to learn, and Sid glanced at Zhenya and grinned, still pedaling.

“No!” Zhenya said. He liked his underwear, and all the rest of his gear.

Fleury smirked at him. “Come on,” he said, snapping the scissors. Sid was smiling encouragingly, and so Zhenya went, with some trepidation, and found himself an accessory to his very first prank with the Penguins: cutting a hole in the crotch of Scuderi’s jeans, and Fleury giggling the whole time with one hand over his mouth. 

“Good work,” Fleury said when they were done, and slapped Zhenya on the ass. Zhenya got the feeling that the prank had been a test, or maybe an initiation, and he thought from Fleury’s smile that he had passed muster.

“Penguins,” he said, because it had worked on Sid, and Fleury laughed and said, “Yeah. Penguins.”

\+ + +

He skated alone, he worked out, he did what the physical therapist told him to do, and the third time he saw Dr. Burke, three weeks after his injury, Seryozha smiled and said, “You’re practicing with the team on Friday.”

“Really?” Zhenya said, hardly able to believe it.

“Limited contact,” Seryozha said. “But yes. He says you’re progressing well. Mortland told him you’ve been taking your rehab seriously and doing your exercises. Everyone’s happy with you.”

“Thank you,” Zhenya said to Dr. Burke, in English, and immediately started doing the mental math on how many hours there were until practice.

That practice went well, and in the next one he took contact, and the day after that he was cleared to play. He had only missed four games.

“Can’t you tell them to hold you out for two more games?” his father asked, when Zhenya called to share the news. “We’ll be there on Saturday—”

Zhenya wasn’t sure what face he made, but his mother started laughing and said, “Volodya, look at him, he’ll die if he doesn’t get on the ice soon,” which was a slight exaggeration, but not by much.

At breakfast the next morning, Ksusha served him eggs and toast and a few cookies to dunk in his tea and said, “Natasha and I will be at the game tonight, since your parents can’t make it.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Zhenya protested. The games ended after Natasha’s bedtime, and Ksusha mostly watched from home.

“I made a sign!” Natasha said, and slid down from her chair and ran into the next room.

“That was supposed to be a surprise,” Ksusha said, laughing, as Natasha returned holding a sheet of poster board larger than she was. Written on it, in glittery pink letters, was Zhenya’s number, and below that, _WE’RE SO PROUD!_

“You don’t make signs like that for _me_ ,” Seryozha said, and he and Ksusha bickered fondly about that and gave Zhenya a few moments to pretend his eyes weren’t watering.

Late that afternoon, when he arrived at the rink, he was summoned to Shero’s office, just like before. He stood in the doorway and was hit with a dizzying wave of déjà vu. He knew what had happened, even before Birman began to translate Shero’s words.

“You aren’t named in the lawsuit,” Birman said. “You won’t have to go to court. But—” He turned to Shero and asked a question, and then said to Zhenya, “He’s using some technical term I don’t know. Basically, Metallurg wants to prevent you from playing in the NHL while the lawsuit progresses.”

“They can’t,” Zhenya said pleadingly, although he knew very well that they could.

“The team’s lawyers think the case will be dismissed,” Birman said, and listened to Shero for a moment, and added, “They don’t want you to worry. Focus on hockey and don’t think about the lawsuit.”

Easy for him to say. Zhenya went downstairs to the change room shrouded in a thunderhead of fury and terror, but as he dressed in his base layers he forced himself to set aside his concerns. There was nothing he could do, not tonight or at any time in the future; he would have to wait, and trust the team’s lawyers, and see what came of it. The only thing he could control was how he performed on the ice.

He taped his sticks in the locker room and then wandered around for a while, looking for somewhere to be alone. The other guys had their routines in place already, either established during the previous season or sketched out during the games they had played while Zhenya watched from the press box. He didn’t have any clout here; he was just a rookie, and it was his job to keep out of everyone else’s way.

He ended up walking circuits through the service corridors, listening to his iPod and doing the same visualizations that had prepared him for more games than he could count. He was nervous, but he had been nervous before, before other critically important games, Worlds, the Olympics, the playoffs. He wouldn’t fail now. He wouldn’t be injured again, or ineffective. He would catch the pass on his tape and drive it straight into the net, top shelf: his first game at Mellon, his first real NHL game, and his first goal.

On his third loop, he found some of the guys kicking around a football in the loading bay, and they all called to him, the stupid nickname he would have to accept as his own, and gestured him over.

“Geno! — — —,” Sid called, and Zhenya took out his earbuds and joined them: his team, these men he would sweat and bleed and lose and win with, and maybe not for much longer, but he had it for now. He had made it to the NHL, and he would play at least this one game, in this building, on this ice. 

The future was unknowable. He would exist only in the present moment, the next breath he drew into his lungs, and the moment after that, when he exhaled. He wouldn’t doubt, or try to guess.

“Let’s go!” he said, and Ruutu grinned and kicked the ball to him in a perfect arc.

He started the game on Sid’s line, out there on the ice during the anthem, his cross pressed to his mouth, the lights dimmed and the stands hushed, everyone waiting for the song to end and the puck to drop, and for Zhenya to show them what he was made of.

He did: he played his heart out. And he was rewarded, late in the second, when he poked the puck between Brodeur’s pads and it slid, just so, across the goal line.

There it was: his first goal: the crowd roaring, and Sid, across the ice, yelling Zhenya’s name and opening his arms. 

 

### Things A Body Can Do

In December, in a nightclub in Montreal, Zhenya saw two men kissing on the dance floor. One of them was white and one of them was black, and the black one had his arms around the white one’s neck, and they were both laughing, focused wholly on each other, and then they leaned in at the same time and kissed. It was an easy, familiar kiss, like they had done it many times before, and weren’t ashamed to be doing it here, where anyone could see.

Staalsy, sitting beside Zhenya in the booth, followed his gaze and nudged him. “— — — — — guys, eh?”

He always talked too quickly. Zhenya could understand Sid pretty well, and the French Canadians, and Melichar and Roots, because they all knew what it was like to learn a new language, and they spoke slowly and avoided idioms. But the rest of the guys were hopeless. Zhenya spent a lot of time smiling and nodding.

“Okay,” he said to Staalsy, which was usually a safe answer, generic and non-committal.

The guys were still kissing, slower now, edging into making out. Zhenya had never seen men kiss in real life, only in the porn he had watched once or twice just to prove to himself that he didn’t like it, and then never thought about ever again.

He looked for Sid, to see if Sid had noticed, but Sid was facing away from the dance floor, laughing with Army and Talbo about something. He hadn’t seen.

Zhenya wished Seryozha were there, so that he could make eye contact with Seryozha and witness his reaction, or casually bring it up later and hear what Seryozha thought about it. But Seryozha was back at the hotel, having pleaded old age and an early flight in the morning, and if Seryozha hadn’t seen it there was no graceful way for Zhenya to tell the story.

He probably already knew what Seryozha would say. He had spent most of his life in locker rooms. He knew the things people said.

The guys were still kissing. Zhenya shoved at Staalsy until he slid out and let Zhenya leave the booth. He went to the bathroom and pissed and washed his hands and avoided meeting his own eyes in the mirror. 

He’d had too much to drink, that was all. The Habs had creamed them, four goals in the second period alone, and they were all drowning their sorrows. He hadn’t watched the kiss, because watching was deliberate. He had only seen, a passive resting of his eyeballs, like zoning out in public and realizing you were staring vacantly at a woman’s breasts: embarrassing but accidental.

When he returned to the table, Sid was in his place, and Staalsy was gone somewhere, maybe off to the dance floor again. The space beside Sid was the only empty seat, and Zhenya didn’t hesitate before he took it, because why would he? They weren’t friends, because they could barely talk to each other, but they probably would become friends as Zhenya learned more English. Sid liked hanging out with the team, was easy to get along with when he wasn’t running his mouth during a game, and every time they managed to strong-arm him into going out drinking or for dinner he slowly moved around the table as the night progressed. Zhenya wasn’t sure if it was Sid gearing up to be captain or just his innate sociability, but either way there was nothing noteworthy about him sitting in the spot Zhenya had abandoned, smiling as Zhenya slid in beside him.

“Here,” Sid said, and passed Zhenya a shot glass: expensive vodka, or what passed for it in North America. Zhenya knocked it back and felt it burn all the way down. “Nice,” Sid said, grinning, and bumped his shoulder against Zhenya’s.

Sid had danced a little, earlier, which he usually wouldn’t do, but Talbo had dragged him out onto the dance floor and somehow kept him there for a good ten minutes. He was still a little flushed, and he smelled slightly sweaty, and he was taking up more room on the bench than he should have, so that his thigh was pressed hard against Zhenya’s. 

“Move,” Zhenya said, nudging at him, and Sid laughed and shifted over maybe three centimeters, which didn’t improve the situation at all.

Zhenya wanted to leave. He was tired, and he didn’t feel like drinking or dancing more. He couldn’t hit on women, because they couldn’t understand him. Talbo and Army had taken pity on him a few times and done the work for him, but making out with a different girl in every city was fun but not really what he was looking for. He liked being in love. But he wouldn’t find love here, and Sid was smirking at him and sweaty and too close, and Zhenya just—wanted to leave.

“Taxi,” he said to Sid. The hotel wasn’t far, but it was cold outside, and sometimes he could convince one of the guys to call a car service for him, or go back with him when he wanted to leave.

Sid’s eyebrows went up. “You’re — —? It’s — early.”

“It’s boring,” Zhenya said, which wasn’t exactly true, but he couldn’t explain his thoughts to Sid, not when he was barely willing to acknowledge them himself. 

“If you want to — — minutes, — — go with you,” Sid said.

“Call me,” Zhenya said, and then, because Sid was polite and expected everyone else to be as well, “Please?”

Sid sighed and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Zhenya gave him a smile that he hoped looked more grateful than miserable, and slid out of the booth to put on his coat, ready to go out into the cold.

He thought—or maybe hoped—that Sid would go with him. But Sid stayed where he was, talking to Whits about something, and he didn’t even glance over as Zhenya downed one final shot and left.

\+ + +

He could only blame himself. Sid was above reproach: kind, patient, cheerful, dorky. His dedication to hockey made Zhenya ashamed of his own laziness. He thought always of the team, of what was best for the team. Zhenya had worried he might feel jealous, because Sid was a better player than he was and everyone knew it, but Sid had no ego, was thrilled when his teammates did well because it meant the team was doing well, and Zhenya decided he wanted to be that same way.

Sid was nice to Zhenya because he was nice to everyone. He asked Zhenya to dinner because he wanted Zhenya to feel at home and comfortable on the team, and Zhenya did, increasingly, and in large part due to Sid’s efforts. There was no hidden meaning to any of it. Sid had never once let his eyes wander in the locker room. He liked girls; he and Talbo liked to look at girls in bars and restaurants, although Sid wouldn’t ever go talk to any of them, always too aware of who might be watching him, of what might be said. 

Zhenya didn’t let his own eyes wander. He didn’t watch; he only saw, incidentally, accidentally, in his peripheral vision, and he never dwelled on it or thought about it later, when he was at home. Sid was naked a lot, more than most of the guys, because he liked hanging out in the locker room and would sit around in his underwear for a long time after practice, or roam around after showering in not even so much as a towel. He wasn’t doing it on purpose. He didn’t think anything of being naked because there was no reason to think about it. They were all guys. There was nothing interesting about seeing someone else’s dick, or any reason to hide your own.

When Zhenya was younger, he had thought the way he felt was normal. Everyone liked to look at their teammates, and had to be careful not to look too long or too obviously. But he couldn’t keep lying to himself: nobody else had these problems, and when they mocked Sid for his giant ass, it wasn’t because they wanted to touch it. Zhenya was the only one.

He needed a girlfriend. He hadn’t gotten laid since the summer, a few random one-night stands after he and Kristya broke up. He was just horny.

He had the dream again, the night after they got back from Montreal. He woke up hard in the predawn light and rolled onto his back, and covered his face with his hands. He wouldn’t jerk off. The dream lingered, hot fragments of it, the—person’s body on top of his, weighing him down—

He was surly on the way to practice that morning. He and Seryozha carpooled most of the time, but Seryozha refused to let Zhenya drive, which was generally irritating but now permitted him to stare out the window and not talk.

“What are you sulking about, Zhenka?” Seryozha asked.

“I’m not,” Zhenya said. “Just didn’t sleep well.” The glass of the window was cool against his forehead. A light rain drizzled against the windshield. Everyone swore the warm weather was unusual, but Zhenya had nothing to compare it to, and would have been perfectly willing to accept that December in Pittsburgh was always this temperate.

Sid was in the lounge when they arrived, eating scrambled eggs with Army. He waved as they came in, and the entire half-remembered shape of the dream rolled over Zhenya all at once, like taking a breaker to the knees and going down hard in the surf, tumbled over and over on the rough sand. 

Shame flooded Zhenya’s face with heat. He ducked away from Sid’s greeting and slouched toward the change room. Behind him, he heard Seryozha say, “He’s in a bad mood,” and then a rapid-fire response from Army that he couldn’t understand.

It wasn’t a bad mood. He was tired of Seryozha’s constant mild amusement, like Zhenya’s emotions were nothing to be taken seriously, only fondly suffered through. Of course Seryozha found it easy to be even-tempered: he had a family, a beautiful wife, an adorable daughter, and everything in his life was settled and safe. He hadn’t made mistakes the way Zhenya had and still was.

Hockey was the only easy thing. He found solace on the ice every time he laced his skates. Metallurg’s injunction had been denied, that would have kept him from playing with the Penguins, but the lawsuit was still in progress, and Zhenya wouldn’t be able to relax until that was all finished, one way or another. And he still couldn’t talk to anyone, not really, although that was getting better, and he couldn’t look at Sid without thinking—

He was lonely. He wasn’t alone, he had the Gonchars and the Birmans, and Genya when he was in town and not in Moscow, and all the guys on the team, who were happy for him to sit silently in their midst as they ate steak and talked about—well, Zhenya wasn’t sure what. But he had thought the loneliness would ease, and instead it was only getting worse. He missed his friends. He missed his mother’s cooking. He was homesick. And that was the only reason. His head was a mess, he was horny, he was all turned around, and it wasn’t really about Sid at all. He was just confused.

They lost their next game, to the Blues, and then flew to Atlanta to lose to the Thrashers, and then they had four days off for most of the team to celebrate Christmas and for Zhenya to lie on the couch in the basement with the cat passed out on his chest, twitching slightly as he hunted invisible mice. Ksusha had baked cookies for Natasha’s preschool, and Zhenya ate more of the leftovers than he probably should have, although he mostly used his bad English as an excuse to ignore his diet plan. It was still too warm for snow.

Sid sent a text message on the morning of the 25th to everyone on the team, which Zhenya painstakingly deciphered: **Merry Christmas :)**

Zhenya had the dream again. He was rubbing off on someone in a frantic grind, rolling his hips down against them, and then they flipped him over so they were on top. He looked up at their face and he knew who it was. 

His briefs were a mess when he woke up, sticky with come. He hadn’t had a wet dream in years. 

Albert was curled up against the other pillow, his paws tucked beneath his body. His expression looked judgmental. He leaned in to sniff Zhenya’s face.

“The fuck are you looking at?” Zhenya asked, and pulled the covers up over his head.

\+ + +

He didn’t pay any attention to the All Star voting once it was clear he wasn’t going to be selected. Being named to the YoungStars roster took him by surprise. “It’s like a pity nomination?” he asked Seryozha, who had been tasked with conveying this information. “Not quite good enough for the All Star game, but nice try?”

“I suppose you can think of it that way, if you want to feel sorry for yourself,” Seryozha said. “Or you could consider it a free trip to Dallas and an excuse to get drunk with Ovechkin.”

Zhenya perked up. He had forgotten that Sasha would be there. “Do I have to talk to reporters?”

Seryozha rolled his eyes. “Probably? I’m sure they’ll find you an interpreter. This isn’t optional, you’re going unless you get injured.”

“Well, I guess,” Zhenya said, and immediately texted Sasha: **see you in Dallas old man**

Five of them flew to Dallas on a charter plane: Sid, the only one on the team who was playing in the actual All Star game, and Zhenya, and Staalsy and Whits, who were YoungStars along with him; and Lemieux, who was being recognized in an event on the first evening. Zhenya sat across the aisle from Staalsy on the flight and let him eat some of the Russian snacks Ksusha had given him as a good-luck present. 

“Penis,” Staalsy told him earnestly, holding up a napkin.

“You really think I’ve made it four months in the locker room without learning that word?” Zhenya asked him.

“I — — speak Russian,” Staalsy said.

“And I don’t speak fucking English, maybe you should learn,” Zhenya said, so they were getting along just fine.

He hadn’t been to Texas before, but nothing between their gate and the arrivals pickup struck him as out of the ordinary, aside from a couple of people wearing comically large cowboy hats. The league had sent an honest-to-God limo to pick them up, no doubt because of Lemieux, and Sid and Staalsy giggled to each other about it as they loaded their gear bags into the trunk.

“— — —,” Sid said to Zhenya once they were en route, sprawled on the broad leather seats. He had plopped down beside Zhenya and was letting their knees knock together, even though there was plenty of room.

“What?” Zhenya said, because Sid at least would repeat himself, or rephrase. On the other side of the car, Staalsy and Whits had discovered some way to turn on strips of purple lights along the seat bases.

“It’s fun,” Sid said slowly. “Yeah? The All Star game?”

Zhenya huffed. “Me, YoungStar. Not All Star.” Well, he hadn’t played well enough; he didn’t deserve it. Next year he would do better, and people would vote for him.

“Yeah, but it’s — — — lot of fun,” Sid said, which didn’t surprise Zhenya at all. Sid was always happy about hockey.

They were met at the hotel by a cluster of people holding clipboards who walked with them into the gleaming lobby, talking the whole time. The place was swarmed with people: fans, reporters, league officials, players waiting to check in. Sid was immediately culled from the herd and swept off toward a waiting news crew. Zhenya clutched his bag and prayed he wouldn’t be expected to give any interviews. 

“Zhenya,” someone said, and when Zhenya turned, it was Sasha Ovechkin.

Zhenya had seen him a month ago, for an away game in Washington, but of course it was good to see him again now. They embraced and shook hands, and Sasha said, “I guess I’m your interpreter now. Do I get paid for this?”

“Seryozha told me they’d find someone, but I thought you’d be playing hockey,” Zhenya said. Sasha’s hair looked stupid, curling in front of his ears, but otherwise he looked good, and familiar, and Zhenya was so fucking relieved to be with someone he could talk to.

Sasha spoke with the clipboard woman for a few minutes and accepted a room key from her and a folder with some papers in it. “Your schedule,” he said to Zhenya, and when he passed it over, Zhenya saw that it was written in Russian; so at least he wouldn’t be reliant on Sasha’s memory.

They went upstairs to Zhenya’s room. “No roommate,” Sasha said, “you’re moving up in the world.”

“Maybe I’ll be lonely,” Zhenya said. He dropped his suitcase on the floor and flopped down on the bed, still wearing his jacket. The plane had left Pittsburgh earlier in the morning than Zhenya would have preferred. He was thinking about a nap.

He had meant his comment as a joke, but Sasha watched him from the doorway, expression serious, and said, “Radu and I will keep you company.”

Zhenya wasn’t close friends with Sasha Radulov, but they had played together on the junior team a few times, and Zhenya liked him. “Not too good of company,” he said. “I’ve got a game to play tomorrow, after all.”

“You know it’s bullshit, right?” Sasha said. “Nobody’s going to be taking it seriously.”

“I’ll be the only one,” Zhenya said. “I’ll be the MVP.”

“Zhenya,” Sasha said. “How has it been? Really.”

Zhenya considered him. They had had dinner together in Washington the night before the game, but Seryozha had been there, and Sema, and the conversation had been light and joking. They hadn’t delved into anything personal. Sasha watched him right back, leaning against the doorframe, his hands in his trouser pockets. He had probably been talking with reporters before Zhenya arrived.

Zhenya felt strange, all of sudden, talking to Sasha while he was lying on the bed, but sitting up would only draw attention to the strangeness.

“It’s been fine,” he said. “Some parts are hard. I’m glad I’m here, though.” It wasn’t a lie. The NHL wasn’t what he had expected, but nothing could have lived up to his childhood fantasies. And the hockey itself, playing hockey, playing with Sid, was better than he had ever imagined. He wasn’t sorry.

“You belong in the NHL,” Sasha said. “You’re going to win the Calder—”

“Don’t,” Zhenya said. “You don’t know that.”

“I know everything,” Sasha said, and then he pushed off the doorframe and said, “Come on, I told Radu we’d meet him for lunch.”

\+ + +

Sasha had to participate in the event that evening, a useless fake “practice” before the old famous guys came out onto the ice for a ceremony, but Zhenya and Radu sat in the stands with the other YoungStars, and got drunk off the vodka Radu had smuggled in a water bottle.

“There’s Sid,” Zhenya said, pointing to Sid’s small form on the ice, way down below. He recognized Sid’s skating by now, the push-push-push to pick up speed, the way he went low to go around the corners.

“What’s it like, playing with him?” Radu asked.

Zhenya watched Sid catch a pass near the blue line and skate hard toward the net. He said, “He makes me want to be better.”

“Well,” Radu said, and handed over the bottle.

They went for dinner when the ceremony was over, and out to a bar after that, somewhere that didn’t mind that Zhenya and Radu couldn’t legally drink. Sasha was an affectionate drunk who liked to fling an arm over someone’s shoulder or press a kiss to someone’s cheek, and Zhenya let himself enjoy it, just this once, being with people he could _talk_ to, who understood when he tried to make a joke, even if it wasn’t funny.

He was a little hungover in the morning, but breakfast cleared out the last of it, and just in time. The promised interpreter had materialized at last, an old woman named Katerina, the same size and shape as Zhenya’s grandmother, and once he was done eating he was expected to speak with the reporters who descended on his table.

“You could tell them I’m too tired to give interviews,” he told Katya hopefully.

She sipped her coffee and raised her eyebrows at him. “You’re a young man. What’s your excuse?”

“Alcohol,” Zhenya said, and Katya laughed, and then covered her mouth with one hand, like she hadn’t meant to.

He was busy all that day, with interviews and photo shoots, and entertaining a reporter from Soviet Sport who had flown all the way to Dallas just to write a story on him, and then the stupid YoungStars game, during which Zhenya didn’t score once; but when it was all over he went down to the locker room to meet Sasha, as they had planned.

Sasha emerged with his hair still damp from the shower and dripping a little onto his T-shirt. He blew past Zhenya and started heading down the hallway, leaving Zhenya to trail after him. “Let’s get room service, okay? I don’t feel like going out.”

“No Radu?” Zhenya asked.

“He’s going out with his teammates,” Sasha said. He glanced at Zhenya and grinned. “I’ve got whiskey.”

Zhenya didn’t really like whiskey, but it was a man’s drink, and he was determined to learn to like it. The stuff Sasha had gotten was pretty good, smooth and a little sweet. Zhenya downed a glass of it, poured another and downed that, too, and then poured a third for himself.

“Slow down,” Sasha said, laughing. “That’s expensive! You can’t appreciate fine whiskey?” He was taking off his shirt and changing into sweatpants, and Zhenya wasn’t looking at him, not at his back or his thighs or his—

“I’m still too young,” Zhenya said. “You’ll have to teach me.”

Sasha’s hotel room was a mess: clothes everywhere, the bed still unmade after his pre-game nap. Zhenya flipped the bedspread back into place and stretched out, wiggling his toes in his socks, and staring fixedly at a blank point on the wall as Sasha roamed around the room, muttering to himself and digging through his suitcase and finally coming over to the bed with a glass in one hand and the bottle of whiskey tucked beneath his arm.

“Feel free, make yourself at home,” Sasha said. He flopped down on the mattress, not close to Zhenya but not far. The bed was big, but it didn’t seem big now. 

“Thanks, I will,” Zhenya said.

They gave up on glasses after a while, and simply passed the bottle back and forth. The alcohol swam through Zhenya’s body. He had no commitments the next day, nothing to do but sit in the stands in the evening and watch the game, and there was no reason for him not to get drunk, and no safer place to do it than here with Sasha, where nobody could disapprove or take pictures. Not that anyone would care. He wasn’t Sid. There were expectations riding on his shoulders, but he didn’t bear the burden of salvaging the league. Nobody cared if he got drunk on a night off. There were far worse things he could do in public.

Sasha talked about his teammates, his neighborhood, the new Swedish center everyone was waiting for. Zhenya felt smudged like graphite by a cheap eraser. Sasha wasn’t even attractive. His nose was so crooked. The chain around his neck caught the light, and Zhenya’s gaze dropped, following the gleaming line down toward Sasha’s breastbone.

“You’re quiet, Zhenka,” Sasha said, and Zhenya reached again for the bottle and took a swig.

He was warm and his head was spinning. “You’re lucky you have Sema,” he said.

“Why, so he can smoke in my car and refuse to give any interviews?” Sasha said. “That doesn’t sound like luck to me.”

“I miss you,” Zhenya said, which wasn’t quite right, because he and Sasha got along well but had never been in the same place for long enough to become close friends. But he didn’t know how to say what he meant.

Sasha was watching him. What did his expression mean? Zhenya didn’t know, and he drank from the bottle again to hide his confusion. 

“You’re a weepy drunk,” Sasha said lightly, steering the conversation back into the safe territory of friendly mockery. “It’s no surprise, men from Chelyabinsk are always soft—”

“Oh, _soft_ ,” Zhenya scoffed. He screwed the cap back on the bottle. “I seem to remember you crying at World Juniors—”

“I was in _pain_ , you asshole,” Sasha said, and rolled over to put Zhenya in a headlock.

Zhenya struggled, but there was no use. He was taller, no matter what their official heights claimed, but Sasha outweighed him and got him pinned down, and none of Zhenya’s thrashing or kicking could dislodge him. The discarded bottle knocked against his elbow and rolled away. Sasha was big and warm and bearing him down into the mattress, laughing, his breath whiskey-hot against Zhenya’s cheek, and suddenly it was just like the dream, Zhenya was there inside the dream, the nameless body on top of him, and he turned his head aside and gasped for air and couldn’t think.

“Do you give up?” Sasha asked.

He needed to yield. He would yield, and then Sasha would let him go, and he would go back to his own hotel room and nothing would happen. A drunken night, some harmless tussling. Nothing they hadn’t done before.

“Fuck you,” Zhenya said, and Sasha laughed and bore down harder, swinging one leg over to—oh, God—pin Zhenya’s thighs, and in that some motion he grabbed Zhenya’s wrists and yanked his arms above his head.

“ _Now_ do you give up?” Sasha asked, his hands tightening around Zhenya’s wrists.

Zhenya couldn’t help the noise he made, or the way he arched beneath Sasha’s body. 

In the next moment, he was flooded with terror and adrenaline. There was no way for Sasha not to notice. Zhenya was hard, not completely but surely enough to be obvious, and he was probably too old to play it off as a random inconvenient hard-on. Sasha would know, Sasha would figure it out, and Zhenya turned his face against his own outstretched arm and closed his eyes and waited for it to be over.

Sasha wasn’t laughing anymore. His weight shifted, moving away from Zhenya’s trapped erection. Zhenya couldn’t hear anything but his own harsh breathing, and he wanted to disappear, he wanted to turn into dust, but he was here and it was happening. He would never be able to look Sasha in the eye again. 

“Zhenya, um,” Sasha said.

“Get off me,” Zhenya said furiously, kicking out. “Why are you still—”

“Fuck,” Sasha said. He rolled away and sat up. “Zhenya—”

Zhenya turned onto his side and drew his knees toward his chest, his back to Sasha. His face burned. The shame he felt was so hot and excruciating that he was pretty sure he was going to die of it.

“Listen, uh,” Sasha said, and what was he going to say? It’s perfectly natural? It happens to everyone?

“I’m leaving,” Zhenya said, and he would, in just another minute, when he could stand up without humiliating himself further.

“I didn’t know you were, uh,” Sasha said, because he couldn’t ever leave anything alone, he wouldn’t ever shut the fuck up and just _leave it_.

“I’m _not_ ,” Zhenya said, angry and so ashamed, “fuck off, why do you want to—did you like it?” He sat up and turned to scowl at Sasha over his shoulder. Sasha didn’t look disgusted, he looked _worried_ , which was even worse. The miserable complicated emotions in Zhenya’s chest all combined in that instant and transformed into a pure and incandescent rage, and he drew a sharp breath, ready to fight.

Sasha made a face. “No, of course I didn’t _like_ it, but—”

“Then why do you want to talk about it?” Zhenya snarled. “You must have liked it, you’re disgusting, you’re—I’m leaving.” 

“What? You don’t—there’s still whiskey,” Sasha said. “Let’s drink more. It isn’t a big deal.”

It was possibly the biggest deal of all time. Zhenya stood up and started looking for his shoes. They were under the bed, maybe, and he tripped over Sasha’s fucking suitcase and swore and kicked at it. He needed to leave, and—he had socks on, and another pair of shoes in his room, and he was right down the hall. He didn’t need to find his shoes before he left.

“Zhenya,” Sasha said. 

“Fuck off,” Zhenya said, “it’s your fault, you made me,” his eyes burning, and finally he found his shoes, half-hidden under a pair of Sasha’s pants, and bent to yank them on.

Sasha didn’t say anything. Zhenya straightened and risked a glance at him. He was sitting on the bed, his necklace draping over his collarbone, and Zhenya couldn’t read anything in his expression now, neither disgust nor sympathy.

Zhenya didn’t say anything, either. He left.

\+ + +

He woke in the morning with a sour gut, a throbbing head, and a generous serving of regrets.

He could have laughed it off. Now, sober, he knew that Sasha had hoped he would. Ha ha, too long since I’ve gotten laid, you’re so pretty I mistook you for a girl, Sasha. Hilarious. They both would have known it was bullshit, but a flimsy pretense was still a pretense. But Zhenya had blown it, defensive and angry, and it was too late now to pretend his reaction meant anything other than the unfortunate truth. He _was_ like that. He wanted that. Not with Sasha, really, but—with someone.

His stomach turned. He made it to the bathroom just in time.

He avoided Sasha all day. It wasn’t hard; Zhenya had no further media obligations, and Sasha was tied up with interviews and glad-handing and a press conference with Sid. Zhenya saw him only from the distant vantage point of the box in the arena where all of the YoungStars had been herded to watch the game. Sasha was on the ice, ready to play on a line with Sid. Zhenya was in the box with Radu, still mortified and trying not to let anyone see how much of a mess he was.

“Sanya had better win, I’ve got money riding on this game,” Radu said.

“I’m sure he will,” Zhenya said, although in the end the Eastern team lost, despite Sasha’s goal. Sid didn’t tally so much as a single assist. It wasn’t much of a game.

Someone came to knock on his door that night, while he was watching TV in his underwear. He froze, like that would somehow help him stay concealed. How loud was the TV? Could it be heard from the hallway? Maybe he could pretend he had fallen asleep—but the person didn’t knock again, and after a few minutes Zhenya figured that whoever it was had gone away.

Sasha was gone in the morning, back to DC. Zhenya met Sid, Whits, and Staalsy in the lobby at checkout. They were transferring to a different hotel; the rest of the team was flying in later that day, for their game against the Stars the following evening. Zhenya only knew what was going on because Seryozha had told him the plan before Zhenya left for Dallas. Nobody else could explain it to him. 

Sid, as always, looked alert and well-scrubbed, talking with Staalsy about something as Whits frowned at his phone. Zhenya slunk over with his suitcase and tried to ignore the thrill that ran through him at the way Sid immediately turned toward him, his attention shifting seamlessly from Staalsy to Zhenya. 

Sid was friendly. It didn’t mean anything. “Good game, Sid,” Zhenya told him, although of course he hadn’t played very well. It was only the All Star game. Nobody really cared.

Sid rolled his eyes. “Thanks, I guess.” But he knocked his elbow against Zhenya’s: only joking.

A van came to fetch them and presumably take them to the new hotel. Zhenya sat alone in the back row, his temple against the window, and watched the passing scenery, parking lots and construction cranes, and the high-rises of downtown in the near distance. The new hotel wasn’t far—they probably could have walked—but Zhenya was grateful for a few quiet minutes and a chance to remove himself from the feeling of Sasha’s hands around his wrists. 

There was nothing to think about. It had been—a mistake, a slip-up. He wouldn’t let it happen again. He could leave it behind, in Sasha’s hotel room. That moment still existed, frozen in the lamplight, Sasha’s blank expression, Zhenya’s pounding heart, the way he had wanted to ask Sasha if he meant it, if it really was okay. But he had walked out. He didn’t ever have to think about it again.

When Talbo arrived that afternoon, interrupting Zhenya’s post-lunch doze, Zhenya was relieved by the return to normalcy. He liked Talbo, and also Talbo’s cheerful whistling as he hung up his suit was a clear sign that the All Star break was over. Zhenya was back with his team, enfolded in the safe routine of games and practices. He was beginning to know them, their habits and dislikes, the things certain people didn’t want to eat, who snored when he fell asleep on the plane, who needed time alone after a bad loss. He was lonely, but at least he wasn’t alone.

“How was the game, Geno?” Talbo asked, slow and patient.

“Okay,” Zhenya said. “Me, no points.”

Talbo grinned. “Sid, too. No points for Sid.”

“He bad,” Zhenya said, and Talbo laughed and shook his head, because they both knew it wasn’t true. 

Talbo kept talking, more quickly now, the way he did when he didn’t expect Zhenya to understand but was simply narrating his actions. Zhenya let the sound of it wash over him. In his head, he was pulling on his shoes and leaving Sasha’s hotel room; he was letting the door swing shut behind him. He was walking away down the hall. He was deleting the text message Sasha had sent him that morning. It was over.

He didn’t have to think about it. He didn’t have to do anything about it, or change the way he thought of himself. He liked women, he had loved Kristya, and he could have a normal life and be a—regular person, and see without watching, and leave that door closed. He could.

\+ + +

At the end of the month, the very last day of January, Metallurg’s lawsuit was dismissed.

“Really?” Zhenya said, when Genya called to give him the news. He was hardly able to believe it. The lawsuit had been hanging over his head since August: first the potential of one, then the threat of it, and then the thing itself, all the long months as it wound its glacial way through the court system, scraping Zhenya down to bedrock as it advanced.

“Really,” Genya said, laughing, and that was that. Zhenya was free.

He had been telling himself all this time that the lawsuit was the problem, that once the lawsuit was resolved, the constant hard ache deep in his gut would dissolve. He talked to Genya in the early afternoon, after he and Seryozha got home from practice, and he waited the rest of the day, through taking a nap on the couch and eating dinner and coloring at the kitchen table with Natasha while Ksusha did the dishes, to feel different in some way.

He didn’t. He still had that same lowering sensation of doom, an unrelenting background horror-movie soundtrack alerting him to the impending jump scare. 

The Capitals would be in town in a few days. He was probably worried about that, the awkwardness of seeing Sasha again so soon. Once that was over, he would finally feel normal again.

On the way to skate the next morning, Seryozha said, “Are we having dinner with Ovechkin and Semin before the game? Ksusha offered to cook, if they’d like to come to the house.”

“Oh,” Zhenya said. He hadn’t anticipated this, although he should have. “No, I—we haven’t made any plans.”

“Well, ask them,” Seryozha said, changing into the other lane.

Zhenya fiddled with a button on his coat. “Maybe we, uh. Sasha and I had a fight, so. Maybe they won’t come for dinner.”

Seryozha glanced over at him. “You fought? In Dallas?”

“Yeah,” Zhenya said. “It’s stupid, it’s—but I don’t want to see him.”

“Hmm,” Seryozha said. “Well, I hope you’ll make amends soon. I thought the two of you got along well.”

“I guess,” Zhenya said, and turned his head to stare out the window, and stubbornly ignored the looks he could see Seryozha giving him in his peripheral vision.

Sasha didn’t text him about making plans, and Sema didn’t, either. Zhenya wondered what Sasha had said to him, and then firmly cut off that line of thought before it could go any further. Maybe Sasha hadn’t said anything, and Sema had simply forgotten. Right. Forgotten about the game they were playing in two days, or the fact that Zhenya lived in Pittsburgh—and he cut himself off again, ruthlessly, and started thinking about hockey.

Sasha didn’t text him. Zhenya saw him for the first time at warmups, and Sasha avoided him, when the last time, in December, they had chatted for a few minutes as Sasha stretched. Zhenya saw Sasha looking at him and kept his head down, focusing on his own routine, trying to pretend his face wasn’t hot with shame.

“What did you do, Malych?” Sema asked, gliding by.

“Who says it was me?” Zhenya snapped, and Sema raised his eyebrows and went on.

They shut out the Capitals, which was enormously satisfying. When Zhenya left the dressing room after the game, stripped down to his base layers and ready for a shower, Sasha was leaning against the wall opposite the locker room door, waiting for him.

Zhenya stopped short. Bugsy, coming out behind him, said something and shoved at Zhenya’s shoulder. Zhenya ignored him. He was watching Sasha, and trying to think of where Seryozha was, because whatever Sasha had to say, Zhenya didn’t want Seryozha to overhear it.

“Are we going to talk?” Sasha asked.

“No,” Zhenya said. “I don’t have time for this.” They were flying out to Montreal that same night, to play the Habs the next day.

“— — —, break it up!” Scuds said, sidling around Zhenya into the hallway, and Zhenya reluctantly moved closer to Sasha, away from the doorway.

“You’re being an asshole,” Sasha said. He was still in his own base layers, his hair damp with sweat. He had probably been talking to the press. “Are you ever going to talk to me again?”

Zhenya shrugged uncomfortably and stared down at his feet in their slides. He wanted to never think about it.

“I know you’re embarrassed,” Sasha said, “but—”

Zhenya’s shame throttled him, a dark clawed hand around his throat. “You don’t know anything. You don’t—” He tried to think of what expression he should plaster on his face, and settled on a sneer. “Why are you still thinking about it? Why do you want to talk about it? It’s pretty fucking weird how you can’t let it go—”

“Fine.” Sasha pushed off the wall, shaking his head tightly. “This is on you, Zhenya. I’ve tried to—but if you want to be like this, fine.” He started walking away down the hall.

“You’re mad because you lost,” Zhenya called after him, because he needed a fight, he was trembling with adrenaline and he needed to release it somehow, all of the bad and difficult things he was feeling; he wanted Sasha to come back and fight with him. 

He watched Sasha flinch as Zhenya’s words hit, his shoulders drawing up toward his ears, and he felt a vicious flush of satisfaction. “You’re jealous,” he went on, no longer caring that Seryozha might overhear. “You’ll always be second best to Sid, and you know it. Nobody will ever mention your name without mentioning his—”

“Fuck yourself,” Sasha said, without turning, without slowing, and he went around the corner and was gone.

“What was that about?” Seryozha asked, appearing at the door.

“Nothing,” Zhenya said, and went off to shower, where he could weep from frustration and shame and pretend his tears were only water.

\+ + + 

He had been able to lie to himself before because he didn’t know what it felt like. Things he imagined weren’t real, they were only thoughts, and a man couldn’t be held accountable for his thoughts, which harmed no one, unless thoughts turned into actions. Dreams of a body on top of him could be dismissed. Looking too long in the showers was an accident. But now he knew exactly how it felt to have a man on top of him, to be pinned down and have Sasha’s hands around his wrists, and he wanted it, he wanted to feel that again, he wasn’t lonely or horny or confused, any of the things he had told himself to explain his persistent thoughts. He was—he liked men.

He liked men. He carried the thought around for a few weeks, small and spiky, until some of the painful edges wore off. He let himself watch, instead of only seeing: a guy at a bar with nice shoulders, two men holding hands in Toronto. He woke up in the middle of the night in a hotel room in Miami, sweating and hard from a dream, with Talbo asleep in the other bed, and he jerked off very quietly and let himself think about what would happen if Talbo woke up and heard him, if Talbo maybe climbed in the bed with him, if Talbo lay on top of him and held him down and—

He was ashamed of doing it, and felt weird around Talbo in the morning. He wasn’t even really attracted to Talbo, who was a nice guy but had bad facial hair and a weird sense of humor. But he was tired of being ashamed of his thoughts; they were only thoughts. Talbo would never know. There was no harm in it. 

After that it was probably inevitable that he would start thinking about Sid, because of course Sid was the person he kept dreaming about, the person his eyes always wandered toward in the dressing room. He thought about what it would be like to—to tug down those stupid stretchy pants Sid wore at the rink and take his dick out. Sid would turn pink, and he would get hard in Zhenya’s hand, and Zhenya could kneel on the floor of the locker room and—

He wasn’t sure what he would do. He could maybe—use his mouth, but. What if it tasted bad? What if he didn’t like it? He thought about it a lot, kneeling at Sid’s feet, maybe with the rest of the team watching, maybe with Sid’s hand in his hair to hold him there and make him take it, and he learned pretty quickly to only think about that when he had the time and privacy to jerk off. 

Life went on, through all of this. The team was doing pretty well. Genya came to Pittsburgh for a week and then left again. Zhenya knew he was the frontrunner for the Calder, although he tried not to think about that at all. He watched a lot of American TV and eavesdropped on everything that went on in the locker room, and he still couldn’t say much, but he was beginning to understand more, especially if he was just listening to someone else’s conversation and wasn’t expected to respond. Seryozha and Ksusha had told him he was welcome to live with them for as long as he wanted, and he finally believed them and bought some things for his room: a poster of the Russian Five, a glass dolphin filled with colored sand that he picked up in Florida, to sit beside the lamp on his desk.

Maybe they would change their minds, if they knew about him. He tried not to think too much about that.

Michy’s birthday was at the beginning of March, when they were in Ottawa the day before an away game. They all went out for dinner and a drink or two to celebrate, the type of sedate night out that was all they would indulge in the evening before a game. There were some girls at the next table over, pretty, laughing behind their hands, glancing again and again in the team’s direction, and Zhenya looked at them because of course he did. They were beautiful, and they wanted to be noticed, and Zhenya was happy to give them some attention.

“Nice, eh?” Talbo said, sitting beside him, with an unsubtle elbow to Zhenya’s side. “You like them?”

“Yes,” Zhenya said, because: sure, why not? They were having fun with their flirting, and Zhenya was too shy to do anything more than look, but there was no reason he couldn’t enjoy it.

“Guys! Geno wants a chick!” Talbo announced to the table at large.

“No! Talbo, no,” Zhenya said, and then stopped. What was holding him back? He had let Talbo do this for him before, find a girl and coordinate what was going to happen, but he didn’t want to now. He didn’t want to kiss any of them, or even let Talbo drag him over to the table and try to look appealing while Talbo talked to the girls.

Talbo was still talking. Everyone was laughing. Sid was smiling at him from further down the table, and Zhenya wanted to kiss _him_ , he wanted to taste Sid’s mouth, which always looked so soft. He liked kissing girls, but—not now.

“Leave him alone, Max, he’s — — — — —,” Rex said, and Talbo said something that made everyone laugh harder. Zhenya slumped down in his chair and sipped his beer. He didn’t care what they thought.

On the walk back to the hotel after dinner, in the cold dark, Sid hung back to walk with Zhenya. “Talbo’s a lot, eh?”

Zhenya had learned that ‘a lot’ could be good, bad, or somewhere in between, depending on the context. He wasn’t sure how Sid meant it now. “Okay,” he said.

“He wants you to like it here,” Sid said. “On the team. In Pittsburgh.” He smiled earnestly at Zhenya, all bundled up in his coat. “So do I. We all do.”

Zhenya swallowed. He couldn’t look directly at Sid. “I do. It’s—Penguins.”

“Yeah,” Sid said. He was still smiling. He was so happy all the time, like he didn’t have any problems or concerns, which Zhenya knew wasn’t true. He saw the pressure Sid was under. “It’s a good team.”

Let me kiss you, Zhenya wanted to say, and didn’t. He might kiss girls again; he would probably like to. But right now he only wanted to kiss Sid.

\+ + +

The internet made everything easy. Zhenya went online and found exactly what he was looking for, and carefully scrubbed his search history afterward. The translation website wasn’t perfect, but he got the information he needed. There were a few options, and he picked the one that looked the most like the nightclubs he had gone to in Russia, loud, dark, crowded, and (hopefully) anonymous.

He wanted to go right away, that same night; but it was a Wednesday, so maybe nobody would be there, and they were playing the Devils the next day, and Therrien would skin him alive if he showed up for skate tired from clubbing. But on Saturday they had a home game, and then a rare day off, without even practice or any team meetings. It was the perfect chance, probably his last good chance for a while. 

The wait was brutal. He had decided, and there was no reason to wait, aside from the logistics of his schedule. He was afraid that if he didn’t go soon, he would lose his nerve, and—he needed to know. He couldn’t keep dreaming and wondering. He needed to _do_ it and know for sure.

He did think a little about whether someone would recognize him. There probably weren’t too many hockey fans in gay bars, and Zhenya wasn’t a big name in Pittsburgh, not like Sid was. He didn’t give many interviews, he wasn’t featured in advertisements, and even people who attended games only knew him as a tall body in a helmet. He could wear his glasses and do his hair differently, and probably he wouldn’t get recognized. And if he did, he would just—lie, and say he had gotten confused, he had gotten the address wrong, somebody had given him bad directions, he didn’t understand America, he didn’t speak English, everything was so different and strange. It was foolproof. He wasn’t being reckless at all.

He felt wild on Saturday, on the ice, and it was a wild game, with a fight in the first period and a whole slew of penalties. The Penguins won in overtime, with a goal and an assist from Zhenya, and he felt wild in the locker room afterward, ready to do something ill-advised.

“Dinner, Geno?” Staalsy asked him, as Zhenya was taking off his skates.

He had hoped for an invitation. “Okay,” he said. “Where?”

“I dunno, — — — — — — — —,” Staalsy said, because he would never fucking learn to slow down.

“Geno,” Talbo called from his own stall. “I’ll text you the address. Okay?”

Everything was working out perfectly. Zhenya told Seryozha he was going out to eat and would take a cab home. He would linger in the showers to make sure the guys went ahead without him, and then he would pretend he got lost downtown or didn’t understand what the plan was. It had happened before. If Seryozha asked why he got home so late, he would say he had walked around and found somewhere to eat on his own. He had it all figured out.

He went through his post-game routine as slowly as he could, fiddling around with his gear at great length and then standing in the showers until he was red all over and starting to wrinkle. The grooming area was empty by the time he was done. He took out his contacts and put on his old, ugly glasses, and parted his hair to one side and combed it back, the way his mother had always done when he was a child and was going to get his picture taken. He didn’t think it looked very good, but he wasn’t really counting on his hair to get him what he wanted. His ass, maybe.

When all of that was finished, he left the arena on foot. The club was downtown, only a ten-minute walk, and he stopped for a sandwich on the way, because he was hungry and to kill some time, because it was still a little early for clubbing. 

He sat at the window counter in the sandwich shop to eat, staring at his own reflection in the glass, mirrored back at him by the lights inside and the darkness outside. His heart raced like he had just finished a shift on the ice. Maybe he hadn’t thought this through. He was wearing a _suit_ , for God’s sake. And he was going to—what exactly was he going to do? Dance with someone? Kiss him? Go home with him? And then what? He didn’t know what he might like, what he might want to do. Maybe he wouldn’t like it at all.

Well, that was the whole idea: to find out.

His phone buzzed a few times in his pocket. The team was texting him, probably wondering where he was. He couldn’t be bothered to actually read what they were sending him. Talbo’s message ended with a lot of question marks. Zhenya replied to him with a dollar sign. Let Talbo make of that what he would.

Zhenya had written the nightclub’s address on a piece of paper, and he checked and double-checked it as he walked. He knew he had found the right place when he saw the sign: a red winged horse above the door.

A few people were standing around outside, men and women both, dressed in going-out clothes. They glanced at Zhenya as he approached and then glanced away, disinterested or pretending to be.

He wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers and went inside.

He heard the music at once and smelled the cigarette smoke. He went down a steep, dimly-lit staircase, following the noise. At the bottom of the stairs, a large bald man dressed all in black guarded the entrance, and he stopped Zhenya and said, “— — — — — —.”

Zhenya stared at him. It was too loud; he didn’t have the faintest idea what the man had said.

“— — — —?” the man asked.

He shouldn’t have come here. He should have gone home with Seryozha, or gone out to dinner with the team and let Sid drive him home afterward. He could be sitting beside Sid right now, watching Sid absent-mindedly eat fries off Zhenya’s plate once his own were gone. 

He could turn around and leave. It wasn’t too late.

“No English,” he said to the bouncer, yelling to be heard.

The guy sighed and shook his head. “Aw, kid,” he said, or something like it, and waved Zhenya through, and Zhenya slipped past before the guy could change his mind.

The club was like every other club he had been in, lights flashing, bass thumping, the crush of people dancing on the floor. But there were more men, and some of them were shirtless, and dancing with each other, and Zhenya wasn’t sure where to stand, or where to look. The bar was way too crowded, and he wouldn’t get served anyway, and wouldn’t want to hand over his ID even if he were old enough. 

He sidled around the perimeter of the dance floor. The club was so loud and smoky. Anxiety squeezed tight around his chest. He could feel himself chickening out. He had done enough for one night; he was here, he had tried it out, and maybe he should go home and regroup before he went any further. 

But he knew if he left now, he would never scrape together the courage again. He could be perfectly content with women, but some part of him would always wonder. He was trying to be the new and improved Zhenya, not the cowardly boy who had fled from his team because he wasn’t strong enough to tell them no. He wanted to try it, and then he would know for sure. And nobody here would judge him. They all wanted the same things he did, and there was a powerful comfort in that, knowing he wasn’t alone in his longings.

He straightened his tie and waded out onto the floor.

He liked going to clubs and dancing, and he had no trouble with that part of it, or with being alone on the dance floor. He wasn’t a _good_ dancer, but he had fun with it, and girls had told him they liked the enthusiasm, and that he didn’t take himself too seriously. He never had trouble finding someone who wanted to dance with him. 

Maybe the rules were different here; he didn’t know how men did things together. But the music was good, a song he had heard on the radio and liked, and he let the rhythm move through him, his body with all the other bodies in that big hot room, the pounding music moving from the floor up through his feet to shake every part of him. He was sweating in his suit jacket and the lights flashed and it was dark and nobody knew who he was. He wasn’t Geno here.

A man caught his eye. Zhenya glanced away reflexively, because he didn’t watch. But he _could_ watch, here: that was the whole point. He looked back, certain that the guy’s attention would have moved on, but their eyes met again, and the guy smiled at him.

He wasn’t bad-looking. He had a nice smile. Zhenya turned toward him, making his body an invitation, the same way he would have done with a woman, and it seemed to work on guys, too—or at least on this guy. He came closer, and when Zhenya didn’t back away, came closer still, right into Zhenya’s space, and then his hands were on Zhenya’s hips, a gentle touch that nonetheless made his intentions clear.

He was shorter than Zhenya, but most people were. His snug T-shirt clung to his muscular arms and chest. Zhenya wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. He felt like an awkward virgin, which annoyed him. He wasn’t inexperienced. He wanted to touch the guy’s shoulders, and so he did, feeling the warm muscle shift beneath his palms as the guy gripped Zhenya’s hips more firmly.

“Hi,” the guy shouted up at him, grinning.

It was no different from dancing with a woman. They started off polite and slowly drew closer together. Zhenya slid his arms around the guy’s neck, and that was a new feeling, like he was the woman here. He didn’t feel like a woman, or like the guy was treating him like a woman, but it was the only comparison he knew how to make. He liked it: the guy’s hands on his hips, and then on his ass, drawing him in close, swaying with him.

The music was loud. Zhenya closed his eyes and felt every millimeter of his body, his shirt damp with sweat at his armpits and lower back, the ache in his hip from falling on the ice during practice a few days ago, the guy’s fingertips teasing beneath the waistband of his trousers. He was alive and he was a man and he could do this, and he wasn’t less of a man because he wanted it. He could be himself and also someone who wanted to dance with a man in a nightclub. He could like women and also feel his breath come faster as he danced with this guy he didn’t know. He could have this.

The guy said something that Zhenya couldn’t hear. His mouth was on Zhenya’s neck, pressing a careful kiss, and then less careful when Zhenya tipped his head back encouragingly. It felt so good. They were dancing closer and dirtier than he usually would, because usually he was with friends who would make fun of him for getting too into it. But he was alone, and this guy didn’t seem to mind that Zhenya was getting hard. He slid one leg between Zhenya’s thighs and dragged him down, and he was hard, too: that was his dick grinding against Zhenya’s hip. 

Zhenya could probably have sex with this guy if he wanted to. 

The thought snapped him out of his lust-filled daze. Was that where this was going? Was he ready? Did he want that? He felt safe in the darkness of the club, but the thought of leaving with this guy, maybe going back to his apartment, made him feel sick and uncertain. He didn’t want to do that tonight.

The guy moved to Zhenya’s ear, kissing wetly. Zhenya rubbed against his thigh and entertained a brief fantasy of getting himself off like that, grinding on the dance floor where everyone could see. Instead he drew back and smiled down at the guy and said, “Need water.”

The guy made an exaggerated pout, but he released Zhenya and stepped back. Zhenya impulsively ducked down to kiss his cheek. This man, whoever he was, had given Zhenya exactly what he’d hoped for.

He wandered around in the club until he located the bathroom, tiny, dirty, and with suspicious noises coming from one of the stalls. He splashed water on his hot face and tried not to visualize what was being done to cause those sounds. That could be him in there, doing—whatever it was. 

Not tonight.

He went back out onto the dance floor. In the crowded room, there was no chance of finding the same guy again without searching for him, and Zhenya didn’t care enough to try. He danced alone, and then with two drunk, giggling girls, and with a guy who slid up behind him, whose face Zhenya never saw, which let him imagine that it was Sid: a bad idea, but too indulgent to resist. He danced until his post-game adrenaline wore off and he began to feel tired. Then he left the club and went down the street to a restaurant the team ate at sometimes, and asked the hostess to call him a cab. 

Nobody had recognized him. Nothing had gone wrong. He was in bed and asleep by 1AM.

\+ + +

He waited a few days for something bad to happen. The team chirped him about getting lost downtown. Talbo showed everyone the text message Zhenya had sent him: “Dollar sign, _what does that mean_?” he kept repeating incredulously, and everyone laughed as Zhenya tried to look mysterious.

“You can always call me, you know,” Sid told him when they were on the bikes later, loosening up a little after practice and before hitting the weights. “If you get lost. I’ll come get you.” He reached over to smack the back of his hand against Zhenya’s elbow. “I’ll only chirp you a little bit.”

“I don’t lost,” Zhenya said, and Sid grinned and kept pedaling. He couldn’t think of Sid in the club with him, dancing with him, somehow there with him. He knew it was impossible.

Nothing bad happened. He jerked off a few times thinking about the guy at the club, and felt like surely everyone would know. But nobody noticed. 

The waiting transformed into disbelieving relief. He had gotten away with it. He had tried it out, and he’d liked it, and now, _now_ he never had to think about it again. He could go back to normal.

His resolve lasted for maybe a week. Then they were in New York with a couple of days between the Rangers and the Islanders, and Zhenya went for dinner with Army and Flower and Sid and a few other guys. He couldn’t really follow the conversation and started spacing out, and realized after a while that he was checking out every attractive person who walked by, men and women alike. One of the guys winked at him as he passed, and Zhenya ducked his head, face burning, and was grateful for once that the team seemed to think of him as furniture. Nobody was paying any attention to what he was doing.

Maybe he would try it again. Just once more.

He didn’t want to go back to the same place again. He felt like that would be tempting fate. And he didn’t think he could get away with pretending to get lost on his way to dinner again, but he also didn’t have any other excuse for staying out after a game, or for going downtown on his own on a night there wasn’t a game. He didn’t have any friends in Pittsburgh, and if he lied and told Seryozha he was meeting some of the guys on the team, Seryozha would probably find out. 

Eventually he decided he would have to tell Seryozha and Ksusha some version of the truth. “I think I’ll go out dancing tonight,” he announced at dinner.

Seryozha and Ksusha exchanged glances. “We have a game tomorrow,” Seryozha said.

“I won’t drink,” Zhenya said. “I just want to get out of the house, you know?”

“You don’t want to take any of the guys with you?” Ksusha asked.

“They don’t like dancing, they just want to sit around,” Zhenya said, and Natasha said, “You can dance with me!” and made everyone laugh.

“Well, don’t stay out too late,” Seryozha said, and Zhenya drove himself downtown that night, when he should have been getting ready for bed, and paid to park his car in the Strip, a couple of blocks from the bar he had in mind. His pulse was doing that nervous racing thing again. He wanted to do more tonight than dance with someone and leave. He wanted to kiss someone, if anyone was interested, and maybe touch someone’s dick. He had been thinking about it so much. 

The bar was a dive, and pretty well populated, but not as packed as he would have expected for a Friday night. But Zhenya had read that the real action was upstairs, and the ceiling was shaking, like maybe people were dancing up there. But he didn’t see a staircase. He ordered a soda and lingered uncertainly at the bar, trying to put together the words he needed to ask someone where to go.

A guy approached him after a few minutes, average height, skinny, cute, probably a few years older than Zhenya. He hooked his thumbs in his pockets and smiled at Zhenya. “— — — dance?”

“Yes,” Zhenya said, and the guy reached out and took Zhenya’s hand.

Zhenya’s heart thumped in his chest. The guy grinned and started towing Zhenya toward the back of the bar, and Zhenya followed blindly, shaken by the feeling of the guy’s hand in his, touching him right out in the open where anyone could see.

They went outside into the early spring chill and up a flight of stairs. “I’m Jeremy,” the guy said.

Zhenya said, “Eugene.”

“Cute,” Jeremy said. He squeezed Zhenya’s hand. 

Inside, the second floor was packed with people. Colored lights refracted off the disco balls hanging from the ceiling. Three men strolled around on top of the bar, and Zhenya realized after a moment, with a thrill of shock and arousal, that they were completely nude.

“Let’s dance,” Jeremy shouted to him, and Zhenya nodded and followed him into the crowd.

The music was fast and heavy, dirty music for slow, filthy grinding. Zhenya let himself sink into it, watching Jeremy’s face, Jeremy smiling at him, Jeremy sliding his hands up Zhenya’s arms to his shoulders. It was hot and close in the room, other people’s sweaty bodies bumping against him as they danced, and Zhenya was sweating and he could feel that his face was flushed. He didn’t feel as awkward as he had the last time. There was no wrong way to dance, not as long as Jeremy was looking at him like that.

The song changed. Jeremy turned around so his back was to Zhenya’s front and pulled Zhenya’s hands around to his hips. Zhenya’s tongue was thick in his mouth. One of the guys on top of the bar was bent over and shaking his ass at the crowd, and Zhenya could see his balls hanging between his thighs. He was ashamed to look, but that was stupid. The guys were strippers. They wanted to be looked at. Zhenya could stare outright, as much as he wanted to, and nobody would mind. 

Jeremy tipped his head back onto Zhenya’s shoulder. His eyes were closed. Cautiously, still not quite able to believe any of this was really happening, Zhenya slid his hands beneath the hem of Jeremy’s T-shirt to stroke his stomach. Jeremy reached back to squeeze Zhenya’s ass, silently urging him on, and Zhenya pulled Jeremy tight against him and let his hands wander, sliding up Jeremy’s chest to play with his nipples. 

Zhenya was hard. Nobody was looking at him. Nobody knew who he was. He was an anonymous body in this bar, doing the same things everyone else was doing. He rubbed his hips against Jeremy’s ass and Jeremy moved with him and liked it, wanted it, had sought Zhenya out, was interested. Zhenya felt like a king.

He ducked his head to nose at the warm line of Jeremy’s throat. He didn’t know how to ask, if there was some signal he had to give.

Jeremy turned in his arms. He said something Zhenya couldn’t hear, and Zhenya bent down so that Jeremy could press his mouth to Zhenya’s ear and say, “Do you want a drink?”

Zhenya shook his head. “No. No drink.”

“I’ll be right back,” Jeremy said, with a squeeze to Zhenya’s hip, and went off toward the bar.

Zhenya danced alone, through one song and then another, and started to wonder if maybe Jeremy had ditched him, and if he should try to find someone else or just admit defeat and go home. A guy was looking at him, taller than Jeremy, bigger, and Zhenya was thinking about Sasha on top of him, and Sasha’s hands on Zhenya’s wrists. He didn’t know how to ask for that, and thinking about getting it sent an uncomfortable squirming thrill through his gut. Maybe—

But Jeremy came back then, with a cocktail glass in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, which he offered to Zhenya. Zhenya took it, touched by the gesture, and Jeremy smiled at him and inclined his head toward the door.

Zhenya followed him out through the hot press of the crowd, through the door into the cool night air, a relief after the smoky sweaty closeness of the dance floor. There were a few other people out on the deck, talking in small groups, and in one corner two men were kissing. Zhenya looked and then looked away, his face heating.

It was quieter out here, although Zhenya could still hear the thumping music from inside. Jeremy leaned back against the railing, and Zhenya joined him, facing away from the door, his elbows on the top rail, hands dangling in the air.

“Nice night,” Jeremy said, around his cocktail straw.

“Yes,” Zhenya said. All of the questions he couldn’t ask piled up in his throat. He wanted to know how long Jeremy had liked men, how he first knew, how often he came to this bar, if he wanted to kiss Zhenya, if he wanted to find their own corner and kiss and touch each other and see what came of it. 

Jeremy knocked his foot against Zhenya’s. He turned to set his drink on the railing, and then he turned back and shifted in closer, the whole length of his body pressing against Zhenya’s side. 

Maybe it was okay that Zhenya didn’t know the words.

Heart pounding, he reached over and set one hand on Jeremy’s hip. Jeremy looked up at him, his eyes on Zhenya’s mouth. Zhenya was no master of seduction, but he had kissed enough people to know an invitation when he saw one. He leaned in, slowly, waiting for Jeremy to pull away, for the inevitable disgust and rejection, but instead Jeremy met him halfway, and then they were kissing.

It was a sweet, ordinary kiss. Zhenya felt Jeremy’s hand on his jaw, and then Jeremy’s tongue sliding along his lower lip. Zhenya opened for him. He tasted like gin. Zhenya turned toward him, gathering him into his arms, kissing slow and deep. The soft wet slide of Jeremy’s tongue made him press closer. Jeremy’s hand was on his ass, squeezing, and Jeremy smiled against his mouth, like he was having fun. Zhenya had been so ashamed for so long, and the way Jeremy kissed him, like there could be laughter here, made Zhenya want to find the joy in doing this. 

Jeremy turned his head and kissed Zhenya’s cheek, one hand on the back of Zhenya’s neck to hold him in place. “Let me suck your dick,” he murmured, his lips brushing the corner of Zhenya’s mouth.

Zhenya panted into the dark air. His cock was full and heavy between his legs. “Here?”

Jeremy laughed and kissed his cheek again. “No. Come on.” He took Zhenya’s hand and led him down the stairs again, and on the landing, turned and went through a door Zhenya hadn’t noticed previously. Inside was a small lounge area with a pool table. Jeremy skirted around two guys making out against the wall and went through another door into a bathroom.

“Here,” Jeremy said, and squeezed Zhenya’s hand.

A bathroom stall was by far the worst place Zhenya had ever gotten laid, but he wasn’t about to complain, not when Jeremy pushed him back against the locked door and went to his knees so easily and grinned when he unzipped Zhenya’s pants. “Nice,” he murmured, kissing the base of Zhenya’s dick, looking coyly up at him, and Zhenya ran a careful hand over Jeremy’s dark hair, crisp with gel the way Sid’s hair always was, and there was the joy, bright and wild. He could have this.

Jeremy’s mouth was soft and wonderful, sucking lightly at Zhenya’s leaking cockhead and then going down with messy enthusiasm. Zhenya wanted to watch, but he didn’t think he would be able to without embarrassing himself. He kept his eyes closed and tried to be polite, not grabbing, not thrusting. It wasn’t easy, because Jeremy knew exactly what he was doing, and also kept making small muffled noises, like he was enjoying himself.

The bathroom door swung open, and someone came in, at least two people, laughing and talking. Zhenya froze, his eyes snapping open, head turned toward the sound. It would be obvious to anyone who looked that Jeremy was on his knees in the stall, there between Zhenya’s feet. They would get caught—

“Hey,” Jeremy said. He jacked Zhenya’s cock, an easy slide, lubed up with spit. “It’s okay.”

Zhenya looked down at him. Jeremy’s mouth was shiny and pink. He smiled up at Zhenya, his hand circling the base of Zhenya’s dick, leaning in to rub the head against his lower lip. Zhenya touched his cheekbone, wanting to believe the reassurance. Jeremy seemed unworried, and he clearly had way more experience with this than Zhenya did.

“You’re so sweet,” Jeremy said, which made Zhenya flush. Jeremy kissed the tip of Zhenya’s dick and went down on him again, holding eye contact as his lips parted, until Zhenya closed his eyes again. 

He heard the sounds of those other guys pissing and washing their hands, and then finally the door opened and closed again and he could relax. But then he had nothing to focus on aside from Jeremy expertly going down on him, and the way his thighs were tensing and his breath was coming short and fast. He wanted to come, and then—maybe Jeremy would want him to return the favor, and Zhenya wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he could try. He could go on his knees and open Jeremy’s fly and see how he felt about it. He had tasted his own come once and it wasn’t really an experience he was particularly eager to repeat, but it was probably different when it was with someone else. Maybe Jeremy would put his hand in Zhenya’s hair and tell him to be good, and he shivered then and he was—God, he was close.

He looked down, breathing hard, and carefully touched Jeremy’s jaw. Jeremy’s own eyes were closed, but he glanced up at Zhenya’s touch, and drew back again to use his hand.

“I, uh,” Zhenya said.

“You gonna — — — —?” Jeremy said, all slurred together, too fast for Zhenya to follow. “Come on,” and he worked Zhenya tight and fast with his hand, pulling Zhenya’s orgasm out of him, relentless, and Zhenya clenched his own hands into fists and beat them once against the door of the stall as he seized up, his face tight and hot, and came.

His blood rushed in his ears as he came back to earth. Jeremy cleaned off his hand with some toilet paper and tossed the refuse in the toilet. Still on his knees, he unzipped his pants and drew out his cock, hard and pink and wet, and Zhenya felt fresh arousal roll through him. He wanted to—do something; he wanted to touch, at the very least.

“Here, come here,” he said, and reached down to help pull Jeremy to his feet. Jeremy went up on his toes to give Zhenya a kiss, and Zhenya kissed him back a little hesitantly, because he had just been, well—but his mouth just tasted the way mouths always did, with a lingering hint of his gin and tonic. Zhenya kissed him with one hand around the back of his neck and the other sliding into the open fly of his jeans, curling around his dick, hot and hard and not so different from Zhenya’s own dick. He had thought this might be the point at which he freaked out, but there was nothing bad about it. He liked the way Jeremy made a soft noise against his mouth and the way his cock twitched in Zhenya’s hand. 

“Like this?” Zhenya asked, jacking him experimentally.

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. His arms went around Zhenya’s neck, and he arched into Zhenya’s grip. His mouth dragged along the underside of Zhenya’s jaw. “Perfect.”

Zhenya leaned against the stall door and held Jeremy close and brought him off, his cock hot and tacky in Zhenya’s hand. He was circumcised, and that was a little different, but the basic mechanics were the same. Zhenya took his cues from Jeremy’s breathing and the way his fingers dug into Zhenya’s shoulders. When Jeremy groaned softly, Zhenya moved his hand again in the same way, and again, sucking wet kisses along Jeremy’s neck, delighting in the way Jeremy shuddered in his arms.

“Fuck,” Jeremy breathed, shoving his hips into Zhenya’s hand. His cock swelled, the same way Zhenya’s always did right before he came, and Zhenya wasn’t taken by surprise when Jeremy groaned a few moments later and spilled in hot pulses over Zhenya’s hand.

Zhenya felt giddy in the aftermath. He had done something he wasn’t supposed to, and gotten away with it, and he kissed Jeremy over and over, clinging a little, thrilled by this new secret illicit thing he had done. Jeremy laughed and kissed him back and then finally pulled away to tuck himself back in his pants and zip up.

“Thanks,” Jeremy said, and gave him a final kiss, and then opened the door and slipped out.

Zhenya washed his hands at the sink, smiling at himself in the mirror. He looked flushed and pleased, and he was, he was _so_ pleased. He wanted to do it again. Maybe he could ask Jeremy for his phone number. Maybe Jeremy had his own place, and they could go there together and take off each other’s clothes and do all of the things Zhenya had been thinking about.

But when he left the bathroom, Jeremy wasn’t waiting for him in the lounge, and he wasn’t outside on the stairs. Zhenya sank from the stratosphere. He had been ditched unceremoniously. Jeremy had meant that final kiss as a goodbye.

Well, that was fine. He had gotten what he wanted, what he had come here for tonight. And it had been really good—great, even. Jeremy had been kind to him. He had liked it so much.

He floated upward again as he clattered down the stairs toward the parking lot. The March air cooled his heated cheeks. He grinned to himself as he jogged toward his car. He had done it: he had kissed a man, had sex with a man: him, Evgeni Vladimirovich. He wanted to do it again.

\+ + +

He didn’t get enough sleep that night, but his pounding heart got him through morning skate, powered by excitement and eagerness.

He felt that surely his secret was written all over his face, but—that was ridiculous. Even Seryozha, who knew him best, only asked if he’d had a good time out dancing. They had an off-ice workout scheduled that morning in lieu of actually skating, and Sid smiled at Zhenya in the weight room and said, “You look happy.”

“Game tonight,” Zhenya said, because he had learned a long time ago that hockey was considered a suitable explanation for every single one of his emotions. He was having trouble looking at Sid without blushing. He had spent his entire time with Jeremy thinking about Sid, and pretending he wasn’t, and those memories made him squirm now, seeing Sid’s cheerful face the same as always. 

“Geno’s — — —,” Roots said.

Sid laughed. “He always is.”

Zhenya wasn’t sure what it was that he always was, and Seryozha was on the other side of the room, and couldn’t be counted on to translate, anyway. Lately he tended to make a sour face and tell Zhenya he needed to spend more time with his flashcards. But Roots was a nice guy and probably wasn’t saying anything unkind.

“Sid, you score,” Zhenya said, sitting up out of his stretch to give Sid a wide-eyed look that he knew from experience was very effective at getting Sid to agree with him.

Sure enough, Sid laughed and shook his head, warming Zhenya’s belly. He was always happy when he managed to make Sid laugh. “Okay, G. I will.”

He didn’t, but they won that game, and a few nights later they clinched their playoff spot by beating the Capitals, and Zhenya avoided Sasha’s gaze and shoved aside his feelings of shame and regret. What had happened with Sasha didn’t matter now. Last year, even with Sid, the Pens hadn’t made the playoffs, and this year, with Zhenya, they had. He knew he wasn’t responsible for the team’s success, but he gave himself permission to have a quiet, private thought that maybe he had contributed in some way.

He went out again that weekend, the last time he would go out in Pittsburgh that season. The playoffs were too important to risk any sleep deprivation, but he wanted to do it again, just once more, before it was time to buckle down and do nothing but hockey. Maybe, God willing, the team would go all the way, and of course Zhenya wanted that, but it would also mean two full months of nothing but his own right hand for company and Sid in his head at all times. And now that he knew what it was like, he—well, he wanted to do it one last time.

He went back to the same bar, where he had met Jeremy. If something worked well once, he would stick with it until it stopped working. Hockey had taught him that, and he hadn’t done terribly for himself, so there was probably something to it.

He was more confident this time. He knew where to go: up the stairs, to where the dancing was. Men found him attractive, or at least two men had, and maybe he would get lucky and find a third. The bar was as loud and hot and smoky as it had been the last time, and Zhenya gleefully joined the dancing crowd. He didn’t recognize the music, but it had a good beat, good for dancing. Zhenya moved with it and watched one of the strippers on the bar tug down the front of his shorts to show off his dick, and let himself think it was sexy, let himself get turned on. He had to be careful everywhere else, but he didn’t have to be careful here.

He surveyed the crowd, looking for someone who might look back. A lot of people were in groups, which was too intimidating, or paired off and dancing, and probably not interested. 

There was a guy at the bar who had been talking with one of the strippers and turned now to face toward the dance floor, grinning, leaning back with his elbows on the bar. He was big and muscular, not the way hockey players were muscular, but like he spent a lot of time at the gym and cared about what his body looked like. He had a short, dark beard and a good smile, good shoulders, good thighs, and Zhenya didn’t realize quite how obviously he was staring until his gaze returned to the guy’s face at last and their eyes met.

Zhenya flushed hot. But he didn’t look away, because he wasn’t ashamed, and he wasn’t doing anything wrong. The guy’s gaze dipped down, taking in the shape of Zhenya’s body, his bare arms in his T-shirt, his narrow hips in his jeans. Zhenya didn’t care what he looked like as long as he was able to do what he wanted to on the ice, but he hoped now, under this man’s assessing gaze, that he wouldn’t come up short.

The guy took a swig from his beer bottle, his head tipped back, his gaze on Zhenya the whole time. Zhenya moved closer, turning sideways to slip between two clusters of dancers. The guy didn’t look away. The expression on his face filled Zhenya with a boundless confidence. He wasn’t going to get shot down.

“Hi,” he said, when he was close enough.

The man gave Zhenya a long considering look. He reached out and hooked his fingers in the pockets of Zhenya’s pants, and Zhenya went gladly, nudging their hips together, ducking his head and hoping the guy would take him up on his wordless offer.

He did. Holding Zhenya against him, he brought his chin up for a wet, open-mouthed kiss, and Zhenya shivered at the soft glide of tongue, the way he could feel the guy’s dick, not hard yet but interested. 

Their mouths worked together sweetly and then parted. Zhenya was putting off sparks. His body was hungry in a fierce way that felt primal. He was a collection of parts, and every one of them wanted this guy’s hands on him, because it felt good and because he still had something to prove, to himself or to the bland uncaring universe. He wasn’t mistaken. He liked this and he wanted to have it, and he didn’t care what Sasha thought, or what any of the guys on the team might think, or Seryozha and Ksusha, or his parents. Or Sid. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.

The guy tilted his head toward the door and raised his eyebrows. Yes, Zhenya’s body said, and he opened his mouth and said, “Yes.”

They went downstairs together. The guy didn’t tell Zhenya his name, and Zhenya didn’t ask. His cock stiffened as they went through the lounge, where the pool tables were. He was going to get laid.

The bathroom wasn’t empty: there were feet beneath a stall door, and the soft noises of someone moaning. Zhenya hesitated in the doorway. They should probably find somewhere else to go.

But the guy had gone ahead into the room, and he turned now, standing by the sinks, and looked at Zhenya and said, “Well?”

Zhenya gestured vaguely toward the occupied stall, which was shaking rhythmically now. “It’s, uh.”

The guy shrugged. “So?” He gestured Zhenya into the room. “Come on. I’m gonna — — — — —.”

Zhenya sidled in, letting the door swing shut behind him. He wasn’t sure what the guy wanted, but he didn’t want to ask and show his ignorance.

“You shy?” the guy asked, and he smiled at Zhenya for the first time, a warm, sweet smile that made Zhenya uncoil. The guy had seemed a little brusque, but—that was a nice smile. He caught Zhenya’s hand and tugged him in, and they kissed again, the guy’s other hand on Zhenya’s lower back, sliding up beneath his shirt. 

“Not shy,” Zhenya said, his lips brushing the man’s mouth. This was a critical point that he needed to convey.

The guy laughed and said, “Sure, I hear you.” He tugged at the waistband of Zhenya’s jeans and turned him around, facing the sinks and the mirrors above them, and said, “Bend over.”

Zhenya’s face flamed. He glanced in the mirror at the closed door, and then glanced over at the stalls, where those unseen men were fucking. They couldn’t—not _here_ , right out in the open, where anyone could walk in and see them.

“That’s right,” the guy said, standing behind Zhenya, hands on Zhenya’s hips, his nice smile turning into something darker, more heated. He reached around to run his fingers over Zhenya’s fly, the ridge of Zhenya’s dick. Holding Zhenya’s gaze, he unbuttoned Zhenya’s jeans and dragged down the zipper.

Zhenya let him, and didn’t protest. The wet sounds of fucking emanated from the stall. Zhenya was hard and he wanted to get off and he let the guy tug his pants and briefs down toward his knees, baring his ass and his erection. His cheeks burned. Anyone could walk in, and they would see Zhenya like this, hard and wanting it.

“I’ll be good to you,” the guy said, and put a hand on Zhenya’s shoulder to push him down.

Zhenya bent over the sink, his forearms braced on the cool porcelain, his head down, tucked against his shoulder, hiding. He couldn’t look. He felt the guy’s hands running over his ass, squeezing, pulling his cheeks apart, and then his dry thumb pressed to Zhenya’s hole.

Zhenya’s breath shuddered out of him. He knew men did this together, but he hadn’t really thought about it, hadn’t ever tried it on his own, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to get fucked over a sink in a bathroom. He looked up and met the guy’s gaze in the mirror and grimaced apologetically, trying to show his uncertainty without having to say it.

The guy’s expression of focused intensity softened slightly. “Just my fingers.” He slid his thumb away from Zhenya’s hole, down over his perineum toward his balls. “Yeah?”

He _was_ curious. Zhenya considered, running his tongue over his lower lip. “Okay,” he decided.

The guy grinned, and brought his other hand to Zhenya’s mouth, his fingers stroking Zhenya’s wet bottom lip. Zhenya opened up for the guy’s thick, faintly salty fingers, two of them sliding over his tongue, pushing deep, and he closed his eyes and sucked.

“That’s good,” the guy said, sounding a little breathless.

Zhenya let go. He stopped worrying that someone might see him. So what if they did? What would anyone here do except maybe watch a little and enjoy it? He listened to the noises coming from the stall and sucked on the guy’s fingers and felt a careful touch at his hole again, rubbing, until it stopped feeling weird and started feeling good, like maybe he wanted more.

He jolted, shocked, when the guy spat on his hole. “Sorry,” the guy said, laughing softly, “just,” and then his thumb was a slick glide that made Zhenya shiver.

“Good,” the guy said. He drew his hand away from Zhenya’s mouth. Zhenya knew what came next, and he hid his face again, flushed and wanting, his dick throbbing between his legs, and he didn’t flinch when he felt those wet fingers sliding along the crease of his ass, rubbing over his hole, and pushing in.

Hidden from view, he squeezed his eyes shut and pursed his lips. The sensation was completely unfamiliar: weird, wrong, intrusive. It didn’t hurt, but it was uncomfortable and strange. He squirmed his hips, thinking about telling the guy to stop.

“— — a minute,” the guy said, rubbing soothing circles on his lower back. “First time, huh?”

“No,” Zhenya said to his arm. He wasn’t a bashful virgin.

“Sure,” the guy said, his voice full of laughter. 

Zhenya scowled. He wasn’t going to back down now. So what if it felt weird? This was hardly the most unpleasant thing he’d ever done. 

The guy twisted his hand and pulled out most of the way. He spat again, and when he pushed back in it felt wetter but also—bigger, more of a stretch, and Zhenya realized that there had only been one finger before, and now there were two. God, it was so strange, it felt so strange, and the guy slid his fingers in and out and Zhenya was still hard. It felt—it didn’t hurt. He reached down and touched his dick, skimming his fingertips over the wet head.

“That’s good,” the guy said. “— — — feel better.” His fingers moved in and out, slowly, pressing deep and then pulling out almost all the way. Zhenya was getting fucked, and it felt so strange and—not bad, but. Strange. He stroked himself and felt like he was kind of—melting, or. He didn’t know what. It wasn’t like anything he had felt before.

His mouth was open against his upper arm: hot, panting. The guy moved his fingers in some new way, and Zhenya heard himself moan, shockingly loud. The guy was laughing at him, not unkindly. Zhenya began to jerk off in earnest, working his dick as the guy fingered him. He still wasn’t sure if it felt good, but he was shaking as he touched himself, and he couldn’t deny that he was going to come like this, bent over the sink.

He was dimly aware that the noises from the stall had stopped. He heard the stall door bang open, and froze, mortified. With his head still down, he could see feet appear at the next sink. The tap cut on. He was going to die.

“— — — having fun,” a new voice said.

Zhenya’s guy laughed. “He’s a —, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” the other man said. “Have fun.” Someone else laughed. The door opened and swung shut again.

Zhenya was trembling. He moved his hand on his dick, teasing right below the head, and he was—close, he was lucky he hadn’t come with those other guys watching him, seeing how much he liked this. Because he did, he liked it, he liked the fingers in his ass, and everything else about it, the guy draping himself over Zhenya’s back now, one hand braced on the wall, his mouth hot on the back of Zhenya’s neck.

The guy said something, but it didn’t sound important. He worked Zhenya over and mouthed at Zhenya’s nape, gentle kisses at first that turned into hard, open suction, his teeth digging in, sucking and biting at Zhenya’s neck, fucking in deep with his fingers. Zhenya was clenched tight around him, not even really jerking off anymore but only holding his dick loosely, rubbing his thumb at the base, focusing more on the fingers in his ass, splitting him open, weird and uncomfortable and pushing him over the edge.

If Sid liked guys, would he want to do this to Zhenya? He had broad, square hands with slender fingers, and he would slide them deep—

Frantic now, Zhenya tightened his hand and tugged at his cock, feeling the heat and pressure build in his gut. He pushed back onto the guy’s fingers and the guy made a soft noise, his mouth open and wet at Zhenya’s nape, and Zhenya came like that, shuddering and coating his hand.

He smiled against his arm, pressing his mouth into his bare skin.

“You liked that,” the guy said, and gently slid his fingers out of Zhenya’s ass. Zhenya lifted his head enough to make eye contact in the mirror. His face was flushed and slack, and he flushed more to see himself like that, still dazed from coming.

He heard the guy’s zipper slide down, and tensed. “Hey, no,” the guy said, patting Zhenya’s ass, and Zhenya pushed up onto his elbows and saw the guy jerking himself off, grinning, his other hand shoving up Zhenya’s shirt to bare his lower back. 

Zhenya dropped his head again and tilted his hips up, letting the guy looks his fill. He floated on his post-orgasm high and it wasn’t long before the guy came on him, the base of his spine and his ass, warm and wet.

“Shit,” the guy breathed, milking out a final hot stripe of come.

Zhenya hid his smile in his folded arms. He felt great: tender, sore, wrung out. He stayed down while the guy cleaned him off with a paper towel. He straightened up when the guy started tugging ineffectually at his pants and took over, washing his hands and then tucking himself back in and zipping up. 

The guy nudged Zhenya out of the way with a bump of his hip and washed his hands at the sink. He smiled over at Zhenya. “That okay for you?”

“Yes, it’s good,” Zhenya said. It really had been.

“Good,” the guy said. He turned off the tap and wiped his wet hands on Zhenya’s shirt, and leaned up to give Zhenya a kiss. “Good luck in the playoffs,” he said, and went out through the door.

Zhenya stayed where he was, petrified, heartbeat roaring in his ears.

The guy had _recognized_ him.

Recognized him, and said nothing about it the entire time he had his fingers up Zhenya’s ass.

Oh, God. Zhenya covered his face with his hands, trying to calm down. He was pretty sure the guy hadn’t taken any pictures, and his face had been hidden most of the time, anyway. The guy had been nice to him. He probably wouldn’t—what, call the local newspaper and say he’d had Evgeni Malkin bent over a sink?

Zhenya had been stupid to think he wouldn’t run into any hockey fans here.

The door swung open again, and a couple of guys staggered in, kissing and tugging at each other’s clothes. Zhenya hastily wiped his hands on his pants, pretending he had just washed them, and scuttled out before anyone else could get a good look at his face.

What would the team think, if they knew Zhenya was here, doing this? What would they say to him? He wanted to believe they wouldn’t care, but. He knew they would.

What would Sid think? 

He spent a few minutes sitting in his car, gripping the steering wheel and taking deep breaths, waiting for his racing pulse to slow. It was probably okay. He didn’t need to worry about it. The guy wasn’t going to say anything. Nobody would believe him anyway. Zhenya would deny it, or just stare blankly at whoever questioned him, that dumb glassy look he had perfected: tall, stupid, probably not literate in any language, not worth asking for commentary. Furniture. Nobody cared what he did. He wasn’t Sid. It didn’t matter.

He didn’t really believe what he was telling himself, but it calmed him down enough that he felt able to drive home.

The streets were mostly empty, this late at night. He flipped through the radio stations until he found a song he liked, a woman’s voice over a slow dance beat, dark and melancholy. It was perfect for the mood he was in, softening and diffusing the curdled anxiety in his gut as he drove, until he was on the freeway and going fast and it all burned out of him, every worry and regret. 

He was alive in his body: every scrap of it. Every stretch mark, every bruise from practice. The tenderness between his legs, raw and sweet. Maybe he had been stupid tonight, but he wasn’t sorry. He couldn’t live afraid. And that was it, that was where he had landed: foolish, reckless, but he wanted it anyway. He wasn’t sorry.

\+ + +

He slept in the next morning, late enough that Seryozha came to drag him out of bed. “Practice, Zhenka,” he said, rapping his knuckles on the doorframe, and Zhenya groaned and evicted Albert from his stomach.

The house was quiet as he shuffled into the kitchen in his workout clothes. The weather was overcast, a slight drizzle from low clouds. Seryozha sat alone at the table. A glance at the clock on the oven told Zhenya that Ksusha had left to take Natasha to school.

A covered skillet on the range held scrambled eggs, left there to warm. Zhenya dropped two slices of bread in the toaster and rubbed at his eyes. He would need a nap after practice.

“The kettle’s full,” Seryozha said. “Plug it in, I’ll make more tea.”

Zhenya did, and when his toast popped he buttered it and dished out some eggs and took it all over to the table.

Seryozha glanced up from his newspaper. “You were out late last night.”

“Dancing,” Zhenya said.

“Hm,” Seryozha said. When the kettle started to boil, he rose to his feet, and then paused for a moment and touched his fingertips, very lightly, to the back of Zhenya’s neck. “Dancing.”

Cold terror washed over Zhenya’s body. He fought the urge to clap his hand over the nape of his neck. He had forgotten, but he could feel it now, throbbing faintly: the mark the guy had left on him, probably the size of a small planet.

At the counter, Seryozha took two mugs from the cabinet, his back turned to Zhenya. Nothing in his posture revealed his thoughts.

A woman could have left that mark. Seryozha knew that Zhenya had had sex, but that was all.

“Seryozha,” he said hoarsely.

“I’m not asking any questions,” Seryozha said. He came back to the table and gave Zhenya one of the mugs. His face held the same mild expression he always wore, and told Zhenya nothing.

The scrape of Seryozha’s chair as he sat was painfully loud in the quiet room. Zhenya’s stomach turned. He shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth and chewed mechanically.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Seryozha said, his voice gentle, and Zhenya stared fixedly at his plate and knew he had blown it, the same as he had with Sasha. His chance to laugh it off had passed. Zhenya’s reaction had confirmed whatever faint suspicions Seryozha might have had, and now he knew the truth.

They sat in silence for several minutes, as Seryozha calmly drank his tea and turned the pages of the sports section. Zhenya forced himself to choke down his eggs. Skipping breakfast was a recipe for regret, no matter how much he didn’t feel like eating.

He didn’t have to say anything. Seryozha was willing to let it pass unremarked, and they could continue on like that forever, in tacit mutual denial. 

He finished his eggs, and the rest of his toast. Seryozha was still placidly reading the paper. Zhenya wanted him to _say_ something, to react in some way, instead of sitting there like nothing had happened, and the hot frustration rose in him inexorably like a flow of lava until it spilled over at last, a searing molten river. 

“I’m not gay,” he blurted out, and the adrenaline rush he felt as the words left his mouth set his ears ringing.

Seryozha glanced over at him, and then closed and folded the newspaper. “Okay,” he said.

“I like women, too,” Zhenya said. “I do. But I was—I was with a man. Last night.”

“Oh, Zhenya,” Seryozha said, and wiped one hand down over his mouth and chin.

“I can move out,” Zhenya said after a moment, burning with shame.

Seryozha reached out and gripped Zhenya’s shoulder briefly. “I hope you won’t. But that’s your choice.”

Zhenya planted his elbows on the table and covered his face with both hands. He was trembling slightly. He didn’t know what to say.

Seryozha cleared his throat. “You know, ah. I played for the Capitals for a long time. There was a man on the team—well, he had a boyfriend. I was shocked at first. I had some ideas, I suppose. Stereotypes. But he was there to play hockey, just like the rest of us.” 

Zhenya turned his head to look at Seryozha with one eye, his hands sliding off to one side of his face. Seryozha looked uncomfortable, but—not angry, or disappointed, or disgusted. 

“There are many ways to be a hockey player, Zhenka,” Seryozha said. “And many ways to be a man.”

Zhenya covered his face again. He eyes were prickling. He wouldn’t cry.

“I don’t know much,” Seryozha said. “I don’t understand it. Maybe I’ll say the wrong things to you. I might be saying the wrong things now. I don’t know.” He sighed. “I hope you won’t move out. Natasha would miss you.”

“I don’t want to move out,” Zhenya said to his hands.

“That’s good,” Seryozha said. “Here, I’ll make you another cup of tea.” He got up from the table, and Zhenya took the opportunity to swiftly pull the ends of his sleeves up over the heels of his hands and blot his eyes. 

Making the tea took a few minutes. By the time Seryozha returned to the table, Zhenya felt capable of making eye contact. “Thank you,” he said, accepting the mug, and Seryozha smiled at him.

“Drink that, and we’ll leave for practice,” Seryozha said, like it was any other morning.

Zhenya cradled the mug in his cold hands. “Are you going to tell Ksusha?”

“I tell her most things,” Seryozha said cautiously. “If you’d like me to keep it a secret—”

“Please tell her,” Zhenya begged. He wanted her to know, but he couldn’t bear the thought of telling her himself. He would need at least six months to recover from telling Seryozha.

Seryozha pursed his lips, and Zhenya expected to be told that he should really sack up and do it himself, but then Seryozha nodded and said, “Yeah, okay. I’ll tell her.”

“But nobody else,” Zhenya said.

“No, Zhenya,” Seryozha said. His expression was very gentle. “I won’t tell anyone else.”

They cleaned up a little in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher and rinsing out the kettle. The hot, tight feeling around Zhenya’s eyes faded. He hadn’t died, so that was something.

“Just one thing,” Seryozha said, and Zhenya’s heart dropped, but when he looked over, Seryozha was smirking slightly, a hint of wicked mischief on his face. “No boys in the house,” he said, in the same calm voice he had used, when Zhenya first moved in, to tell him no girls.

“ _Stop it_ ,” Zhenya groaned. He had never been happier to be teased.

He was thoroughly chirped in the locker room later, the type of filthy, robust mockery that hockey players mastered like any other skill, just as essential as stick handling or puck protection. But he was ready for it, and he grinned and let himself turn red and said nothing. Most of the time he pretended to understand less than he did, and he was grateful for it now, when nobody expected him to respond.

“Good night, eh?” Sid said to him as they walked out to the ice.

“Yes, good,” Zhenya said, and watched Sid grin at him, crooked, and waddle on ahead.

\+ + +

He wasn’t sure what Seryozha said to Ksusha, or when, but a few days later he got home from practice and found a small wrapped package on his desk. Taped to it was an envelope with a card inside, with Ksusha’s handwriting.

 _You can have a happy ending,_ she had written.

The gift was a book, translated into Russian. Zhenya devoured it in three days, as they flew to Ottawa to beat the Senators, and home again for their final game of the season. The main character struggled with his sexuality, fell in love with a man, had his heart broken, fell in love again, and the passionate romance of the second half of the story captivated Zhenya. And there was a happy ending, as Ksusha had said. Nobody died. Nobody was left broken-hearted. They lived and were together and happy, and when Zhenya finished the final sentence, up too late the night before playing the Rangers, he lay with the closed book clasped against his chest and stared blankly at the ceiling for a minute or two, overcome.

“Thanks for the book,” he said to Ksusha in the morning, a little shy about it, because she had clearly read it, or at least knew what it was about.

“You’re welcome,” she said, smiling at him. “How many eggs?”

\+ + +

They went out to the Senators in the first round. Five games, and they were out of the playoffs. It wasn’t even the end of April.

“Well, let’s go to Worlds,” Seryozha said on the flight home from Ottawa, when Zhenya was still mired in numb defeat.

“I guess,” Zhenya said, but he called Genya the next day, and Genya called the national team, and by locker cleanout, the day after that, he was on the roster. 

Army and Staalsy were going to Moscow for the tournament, but not Sid. He had broken his foot last month and been playing on it since, and needed to take time off to let it heal.

“I’d like to see Moscow,” he said to Zhenya wistfully, when Zhenya went to sit by him as Sid dug around in the truly astounding quantity of shit he had accumulated at his stall: rolls of tape, multiple pairs of scissors, the disgusting, sweat-encrusted hat he wore during media scrums.

“You visit,” Zhenya said. He knew Sid wouldn’t, and didn’t really mean the offer seriously. His crush on Sid was bright and glowing, but Sid was straight. It would never happen.

It would be nice, though, to show Sid around the city. Not that Zhenya knew it that well, but he spoke Russian, so he could fake it. He could play tour guide. He could take Sid to the restaurant where Genya had taken Zhenya and his parents, the day he signed with the agency. Or to the Red Square, or—maybe Sid liked architecture; there were plenty of fancy buildings. Sid would smile at him and enjoy everything, and they would go back to their hotel in the evenings and—

It would never happen.

Sure enough, Sid laughed and said, “Yeah, maybe,” already turning away.

Before he and Seryozha left the arena, Zhenya said goodbye to everyone on the team. Some of the guys hugged him, to his surprise and pleasure: Talbo, Staalsy, Bugsy—and Sid, slapping Zhenya on the back a couple of times, smiling when he drew back, his face a little pink.

“See you in September,” Sid said. “Good luck at Worlds.”

“Have good summer,” Zhenya said. He patted Sid’s shoulder and let go.

 

### One Week in the White City

He went to Moscow in early July to meet with Genya and sign some papers, and to have a meeting about a potential endorsement deal. That took two days, but he stayed for the rest of the week. He wanted to get fucked, and he couldn’t do it in Magnitogorsk, where too many people knew him.

Moscow was anonymous. He hadn’t told anyone about his plans, not his parents or Genya, or even Seryozha, who spent his summers in Moscow and had told Zhenya he was welcome to stay with them if he was ever in town. He got a hotel room in the heart of the city, near all of the nightlife and shopping and excitement, and he had five days to himself. He could do whatever he wanted.

He went to the Sanduny baths, and he bought a new suit, and wallowed in the simple luxury of feeling like a competent adult again, instead of a helpless fool limited to broken sentences and hand gestures. He hadn’t realized how tired he was every day from struggling to speak English until he was back in Russia and could speak to people and understand every conversation without effort. Even after two months back in the country, the relief of it hadn’t worn off.

Everything was easier in Moscow. He still thought about the guy in Pittsburgh who had recognized him, with an uncomfortable slither of mortification every time the memory resurfaced. But he could be more careful here, because he could do better research, and find the clubs where there were gay men but not _only_ gay men, so that he could have plausible deniability if anyone recognized him. It still wasn’t safe, because it would never be safe, but it was a calculated risk. He was willing to take his chances.

Even so, he took the Metro and walked from the station to the club he had chosen. So much as a momentary flash of disgust on a cab driver’s face would have defeated him. He couldn’t bear that, not when he was still struggling with his own disgust.

The train was packed with people coming home from dinner or going out to bars and clubs. Zhenya clung to an overhead bar and floated on the sounds of Russian all around him. In some ways, Moscow was even less familiar to him than Pittsburgh was, bright, hard, and cosmopolitan. He had money, but he didn’t know how to wield it, and he was hiding from everyone who could have opened social doors for him. But it was so good to have left Geno behind, an ill-fitting suit he wouldn’t have to step into again until September.

He missed hockey, and he missed Sid, and that was all. His crush on Sid hadn’t dimmed at all, because he hadn’t let it. He kept touching those thoughts constantly, like a stone kept in his pocket, worn smooth by his fingertips until it gleamed. He wanted to bring Sid here, to these places, like he had imagined: Sanduny, the Red Square. They would ride the train together and Sid would use the car’s motions as an excuse to lean into Zhenya’s body. They would be safe together and anonymous in the city’s scrum. 

It was a nice fantasy. Sid was a safe target for his longing, unobtainable as the moon.

A crowd was gathered on the sidewalk outside the club, people laughing and smoking in the warm night. There was only a short line to get in. Zhenya paid the cover fee and went inside, into the noise and the flashing lights and the smoke, the bass a low throb through his breastbone, beating in time with his pulse. He didn’t want to leave alone.

Moscow wasn’t Pittsburgh, and he struck out twice, first with a man who was content to make eyes at Zhenya from across the dance floor until his girlfriend—wife?—came back from the bathroom, and then with a man leaning against the bar whose gaze dragged over Zhenya from head to toes and then skated dismissively away. That stung. His clothes weren’t the most fashionable, and he needed a haircut, but he thought he was worth a second look.

He sulkily went to the other end of the bar and ordered another drink: whiskey, which always reminded him, now, of that night in Sasha’s hotel room. He pushed those memories away. Sasha was somewhere in Moscow, probably, but Zhenya wouldn’t encounter him here. 

He lingered over his drink, watching the crowd on the dance floor. Maybe he _would_ leave alone and go back to his hotel room and jerk off and wish he had worn a nicer shirt. He could try again tomorrow.

“How’s the drink?” someone asked beside him.

Zhenya turned. The man was shorter than him and broader, muscular, and Zhenya was prepared to admit to himself that he had a type. He liked blonde women who looked like they wouldn’t give him the time of day, and stocky men who looked like they could pin him to the bed. Well, everyone had preferences. 

The guy was smiling at him. His eyes didn’t drop away dismissively. Zhenya extended his glass and said, “You could try it.”

The man grinned. He accepted the glass and put his mouth where Zhenya’s had been, and took a considering sip. “Not bad.”

Zhenya had ordered the best stuff, top shelf, the most expensive whiskey the club had on offer. He took the glass from the man’s hand, deliberately letting their fingers brush, and drained it. He set it on the bar. “Want to dance?”

“I’m a terrible dancer,” the man said. “We could have another drink back at my apartment, if you’d like.”

That was direct. Zhenya gave the guy a closer look: dark hair, dark eyes, about Sid’s height, although he looked nothing like Sid: better-looking, and a decade older. His hand was on Zhenya’s hip, fingers dipping into Zhenya’s front pocket. He would know what to do. He would be able to show Zhenya how, and make it good, maybe, or at least not terrible. He didn’t expect the first time to be anything more than awkward and uncomfortable.

“How good is your whiskey?” he asked.

The guy laughed. “I don’t think you like whiskey very much, do you? You want something sweet. I’ll make you a nice cocktail.” His hand curved around Zhenya’s waist, and then slid to the small of his back, big and warm, and Zhenya felt the first stirrings of arousal in the pit of his belly. Okay: they could skip the dancing.

They left the club. “Let’s hail a cab down there,” the guy said, already heading off down the block, and Zhenya followed him, glad to see he had chosen someone with some discretion. “I’m Feodor,” the man said.

“Evgeni,” Zhenya said, and they shook hands, a little awkward since they were walking, and grinned at each other.

“You live in Moscow?” Fedya asked, as they waited on the curb for a car to stop.

“Here for work,” Zhenya said shortly. He didn’t want to talk about himself or his life or share any personal information. 

“Ah, you just want to fuck,” Fedya said. His teeth were a white flash in the dark as he smiled. “Fine with me. I’ll make you a drink after.”

Fedya gave the driver an address in the center of the city, not far from the club, which told Zhenya that he had money. He wondered what Fedya did, if he worked for a bank or one of the energy companies. He couldn’t ask, not without talking about himself. Fedya sat a safe distance away, exactly the distance that was appropriate for two men who were friends, but in the darkness of the back seat, his hand settled on Zhenya’s thigh, high in the crease of his hip, and his fingertips explored Zhenya’s inseam, the crotch of his jeans, rubbing over Zhenya’s balls through the denim as Zhenya struggled not to get hard. 

Fedya’s building was old and a bit run-down, with crumbling plaster on the exterior and cracked tiles in the foyer. Zhenya revised his mental estimate of Fedya’s financial circumstances: comfortable but not wealthy. In the ancient, tiny elevator, they watched each other unsubtly. Zhenya wanted Fedya’s hands on him, his mouth on his neck, his dick in his ass, and from Fedya’s hot anticipatory gaze, he knew he was going to get everything he had been thinking about since that guy in Pittsburgh bent him over the sink.

“This way,” Fedya said, guiding him out of the elevator with a hand on his back, and Zhenya felt a shudder run through him from how badly he wanted what would happen next.

Nervousness and anticipation jostled through him. Inside the apartment, he barely waited for Fedya to turn the lock behind them before pushing him up against the door.

“Oh, we’ll get right to it,” Fedya said, laughter in his voice and written all over his face. Zhenya pushed against him, his hips hard against Fedya’s, trying to get as close as he could. He wanted their bodies to merge together, he wanted Fedya inside him already, for it to be something he had already done, crossed neatly off his list. He ducked his head to bury his face in Fedya’s neck. Now that he was here, he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. Fedya’s skin was warm and smelled of old cologne, the lingering base notes, like he had put it on in the morning and gone out after work without bothering to refresh.

“Shy?” Fedya asked, not mockingly at all, but gently, like he could see the turmoil in Zhenya’s heart. His hands slid underneath Zhenya’s shirt, teasing along his sides, not quite ticklish but enough to make Zhenya shiver. “Let’s go to bed, I want to get a look at what you’re hiding inside those jeans.”

“Nothing very impressive,” Zhenya said, to make Fedya laugh. He lifted his head and they kissed then, light and exploratory. Fedya had a nice mouth, a full lower lip that Zhenya sunk his teeth into, very gently, tugging a little until Fedya opened for him and their tongues slid together. Zhenya’s dick filled slowly. He rubbed himself against Fedya’s hip, hot with it, sweat prickling in the small of his back, where Fedya’s hands were.

Fedya led him down the hall. The apartment was small and the floors were scratched and worn, but it was tidy and carefully decorated. Through a doorway, Zhenya saw a table with fresh flowers in a vase, and pictures hung on the wall. Fedya’s bed was neatly made and there were no clothes strewn around or shoes kicked into a corner like there always were in Zhenya’s room. Fedya probably even washed the sheets regularly. 

Zhenya sat on the end of the bed, his breath coming quick and shallow, and watched as Fedya turned on a lamp on the nightstand, flooding the room with warm yellow light. A ceiling fan spun overhead. Fedya unbuckled his belt and unzipped his fly, and then came over to run a hand through Zhenya’s hair, tilting his head back.

“Will you take off your shirt?” Fedya asked. “I’d like to see you.”

He was being too nice. It made Zhenya’s face heat more than any filth or roughness would have. He unbuttoned his shirt and struggled out of it, awkward with Fedya standing so close, twisting to one side and then the other to extract his arms. Fedya’s gaze dropped, and Zhenya pulled his shoulders back and sat tall. He had some filling out to do, and he still didn’t have so much as a single hair on his chest, but he wasn’t ashamed.

“Nice,” Fedya said. He skimmed his hands over Zhenya’s shoulders. “You work out?”

“A little,” Zhenya said. He was trying to be less lazy in the weight room, inspired by Sid’s example.

“Modest,” Fedya said. He dropped to his knees then between Zhenya’s parted thighs, kneeling on the fluffy white rug that covered most of the floor. He put his hands on Zhenya’s waistband and said, “Can I?”

Zhenya’s face and chest were hot like he was running a fever. “Yeah.”

Fedya pushed the button of Zhenya’s jeans through its hole and dragged down his zipper, struggling a little to work it down over Zhenya’s erection. He slid his hand inside and squeezed, smirking, his eyebrows up, as Zhenya hissed air through his teeth and tried not to push into the touch.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Fedya said. He drew Zhenya out of his briefs and jacked him a few times. Zhenya leaned back on his hands and watched a bead of pre-come well from the tip of his cock. Fedya ran his thumb over it, smearing it, and Zhenya hissed again. Fedya said, “I definitely need you to fuck me.”

Zhenya chewed on his lip. He wasn’t necessarily opposed, but—that wasn’t why he’d come to Moscow. “I was, uh. Hoping you would fuck _me_.”

Fedya looked up at him. He was still fully clothed, and they had barely gotten started, but the visual was a powerful turn-on: Fedya kneeling between Zhenya’s legs, his hand curled around Zhenya’s dick. “You’re young,” Fedya said. “I bet you can go twice. I’ll fuck you with a dildo after you do me.”

“That isn’t the same,” Zhenya protested.

Fedya laughed at him. “It’s almost exactly the same. Don’t be greedy. It’s not every day I run into a dick like yours. You should be willing to share, don’t you think?”

Zhenya scowled. Fedya was trying to manipulate him, and wasn’t even bothering to be subtle about it. Fedya grinned, and squeezed Zhenya’s dick, playing dirty and with no shame about it. And it was working, because Zhenya was horny and he wanted to get his dick wet and he knew it would still be good, even if it wasn’t exactly what he had imagined.

“Fine,” he said, and Fedya grinned wider and pushed up until he could kiss Zhenya, a stretch for him, their mouths barely brushing before he dropped back onto his heels.

“Get undressed,” Fedya said.

Zhenya rose to his feet to take off his pants and underwear and socks. His underarms were damp with sweat. Fedya left the room and came back shirtless and holding a few condoms and a dildo, with a molded crown and balls at the base, perfectly realistic except for the color, a bright hot pink. Fedya tossed it on the bed. Zhenya eyed it uncertainly and felt his erection wilt a little. Fantasizing about taking someone’s dick had been safe and easy in the nighttime privacy of his bedroom, or the couple of times he had tentatively fingered himself in the shower, but the color and size of the dildo intimidated him. He had worked himself up to getting fucked, but enough of the details were different now that he wasn’t sure he could go through with it.

“Too big for you?” Fedya asked. “I’ve got something smaller—”

“No, it’s fine,” Zhenya said. He looked at Fedya’s bare chest and arms and reached down to stroke himself back to full hardness. It was okay to be nervous, but he might as well get it over with tonight, with someone who seemed like he would be careful. “You like that color?”

“I’m not exactly looking at the color when it’s in my ass,” Fedya said. He dropped the condoms on top of the dildo and stepped in to kiss Zhenya, his face tipped up, his hands at Zhenya’s waist again, holding him. Zhenya shoved one hand between their bodies and worked it down the open fly of Fedya’s pants, curling around his dick, the tender firm heat of it, the mat of wiry hair at the base. He loved how it felt, and the way Fedya groaned into Zhenya’s mouth, and the way his cock twitched in Zhenya’s hand. 

“Take these off,” he said, tugging at Fedya’s waistband with his free hand, and Fedya laughed and shoved him gently away to strip out of his pants and boxers at last. 

He was sturdy, thick thighs, thick around the waist, a soft pudge around his navel that Zhenya found endearing. He was hairy all over, his chest and legs and stomach, and his cock was short and thick and curved to one side. Zhenya’s mouth watered, thinking about sucking it, which he hadn’t done yet and felt a little squeamish about but was also desperate to try.

Fedya climbed on the bed and lay back against the pillow, knees bent and spread wide, wholly unselfconscious about his body and what he wanted. He had asked Zhenya to fuck him without a flicker of concern, like it was an ordinary thing that he saw no reason to be ashamed of, and Zhenya decided that he wouldn’t be ashamed, either. It was only sex, and nobody else would know what they did in this room.

“Lube’s in the drawer,” Fedya said, one hand on his dick, and Zhenya took the bottle from the nightstand before he joined Fedya on the bed.

They kissed for a while, Zhenya lying between Fedya’s parted thighs. His previous encounters had been hasty and furtive, and he wallowed in the feeling of Fedya beneath him, the gentle scrape of his chest hair, his cock hot against Zhenya’s belly, the head sticky. It was so much better than a rushed handjob in a bathroom stall. Zhenya wanted to put his mouth everywhere: Fedya’s nipples, furred over with hair; the soft dip of Fedya’s navel; the crease of his groin, and what would he taste like there? A little salty from sweat, from being in the club, and Zhenya pulled back to find out for certain, and Fedya said, “Oh, you’re ready?”

Zhenya sat back on his heels, looking down at Fedya sprawled on the bed. He didn’t know what he was doing, and he could fake it, maybe, but was it so embarrassing that this was his first time? Everyone had to start somewhere.

Still, he felt his cheeks heating as he said, “I haven’t done this before.”

Fedya grinned. “You’re not a virgin, are you?”

“ _No_ ,” Zhenya said, piqued. “I’ve done other things. But I don’t—I don’t want to hurt you. If I do it wrong.”

Fedya’s expression softened. “You won’t. It’s not that hard, hmm? Just use lots of lube, that’s the main thing.” He grinned again. “You don’t have to be too careful with me. It’s not like it’s _my_ first time.”

Zhenya used a lot of lube, and he started with a couple of his fingers, mostly because he was curious and wanted to see how it was to do it to someone else. It had been so good with that guy in Pittsburgh, and Zhenya hadn’t been able to replicate that feeling when he did it to himself, to his intense frustration and annoyance. There was probably some trick to it, but he didn’t know what it was. But he could experiment here, with Fedya, and watch his face and the way his thighs twitched as Zhenya cautiously worked his fingers in.

“You’ve got big hands,” Fedya said, looking pleased about it, but nowhere near as overcome as Zhenya remembered being. He pulled his knees up toward his shoulders, bent nearly in two, and sighed as Zhenya pushed deeper. 

“How’s that?” Zhenya asked, unwilling to outright ask for instruction.

“Good,” Fedya said. He lifted his eyebrows. “Your cock will be better.”

“Don’t rush me,” Zhenya said, “I’m enjoying myself.” He slid his fingers out and added some more lube, and they sank in easily when he pushed in again, all the way to the knuckle. He curled his fingers, like he would if he were fingering a woman, and to his delight it had a similar effect. Fedya sighed again and his eyes sank shut, and he released one of his legs to palm his dick. 

“That’s good,” Fedya said. “Right there,” and Zhenya worked his fingers against that same spot, Fedya slick and hot and tight around him, like the inside of a mouth, smoother than a woman’s pussy but otherwise not so different. He grew more confident as Fedya’s lips parted and his face flushed, and pulled his hand back and thrust back in, aiming for that spot, and was gratified when Fedya’s hips twitched and he gave a quiet grunt. 

“Okay,” Fedya said at last. “That’s enough. I want to feel your cock in me.”

Zhenya’s face heated. Fedya made it sound so matter-of-fact. “How should we, uh.”

“Just like this,” Fedya said. He groped around in the sheets until he found a condom and handed it to Zhenya. “Let’s take you for a test drive.”

“I’m not a car,” Zhenya protested, and Fedya laughed at him. He was happy to be teased, to be able to laugh about this: no big deal, nothing shameful or monumental, only a fun good thing they could do together, sharing the pleasure of their bodies.

Fedya hooked both hands behind his knees to hold his legs against his chest, opening himself to Zhenya’s gaze. His hole was pink and shiny and Zhenya fumbled a little with the condom, his hands slick with lube. He squeezed the base of his dick when he rolled the condom on, trying to calm himself a little. Fedya clearly had certain expectations for Zhenya’s performance, and he didn’t want to disappoint.

“You’re going to feel so good,” Fedya said to him, as Zhenya lined himself up. “Slow, slow,” and Zhenya pushed inside, as slowly as he could, feeling Fedya’s body resist him, and then Fedya moved somehow and Zhenya sank in all at once, as deep as he could go.

“Ah, shit,” Fedya said, “shit, that’s good.” His legs wrapped around Zhenya’s waist and his arms wrapped around Zhenya’s neck, and Zhenya obeyed the wordless urging and lay on top of him, his face tucked in the crook of Fedya’s neck, their bodies all pressed together and Fedya’s cock hot and wet against Zhenya’s hip. Zhenya heard himself panting harshly. Fedya was so tight around him and his hips wanted to move, to fuck.

“Are you—can I,” he said, and sucked on Fedya’s neck to distract himself, to give his mouth something to do.

“Slow,” Fedya said. “Christ, you’re big.” He turned his head and pressed a sloppy kiss to Zhenya’s cheek. “Go easy on me, hm?”

“Sorry,” Zhenya said, as he was expected to, although he had a hard time feeling any emotion other than smug pride. 

“You’re not sorry at all,” Fedya said, with laughter in his voice, and Zhenya cautiously rolled his hips and heard Fedya draw in a shaky breath against his ear.

He focused on everything but the way Fedya felt around his dick: the breeze from the ceiling fan, the slight pain of Fedya digging his nails into the back of Zhenya’s neck. He breathed the way he did on the exercise bike, in through his nose and out through his mouth. The condom helped. He wasn’t urgent, not yet. And Fedya liked it—he seemed to like it—arching beneath Zhenya, his heels digging into Zhenya’s ass, his hands tugging at Zhenya’s hair.

“You sweetheart,” Fedya murmured to him, and Zhenya bit his neck a little, not too hard. He was anything but sweet.

His hips and lower back began to ache with the strain of fucking, but Fedya was going to pieces beneath him, moaning and raising his hips to meet every thrust, grinding his cock against Zhenya’s belly. The sticky smear from the head of his cock was concrete evidence that Zhenya wasn’t screwing up too badly. 

“Up,” Fedya said at last, shoving at Zhenya’s hips, “up, I need,” and when Zhenya pushed up onto his hands, he reached down and started jerking himself off, fast and frantic.

Zhenya drank in the sight of him, all spread out and biting his lip, his eyes squeezed shut, the wet red head of his dick sliding in and out of his fist. “Harder,” Fedya said, and Zhenya stopped being cautious and fucked him hard, watching Fedya’s body shake with the force of his thrusts. He was sweating, sweat dripping down his face, a single droplet of sweat trickling from his lower back down his hip, and he wasn’t going to come, he wasn’t going to come before Fedya did.

“ _God_ ,” Fedya bit out, “right there, right,” and he went still and his eyebrows drew together and he moaned loudly, shamelessly, as he milked out his orgasm all over his belly.

Zhenya slowed but didn’t stop—wasn’t sure he _could_ stop. “Fedya,” he said tightly, “can I—”

“Mm,” Fedya said, his eyes still closed, hand lazy on his dick as he worked himself through it. “Yeah, go on.”

Zhenya put his head down and chased his own orgasm, wound tight, his rhythm falling apart as he approached the edge. Oh, God, it felt _so_ good, even with the condom. Fedya kept clenching on him weakly as Zhenya nailed him just right, making soft little noises that set Zhenya’s blood boiling. He felt Fedya’s hands slide down his back to his ass, gripping him, dragging him in.

“Give it to me,” Fedya said, low, and Zhenya shoved in hard and shook through every sweet wave of his orgasm.

He went still, panting, braced on his trembling arms. Fedya smiled up at him. “Good?”

“It was okay,” Zhenya said, and grinned as Fedya smacked his hip. He reached down to hold the condom in place as he softened and slipped out. “Bathroom?”

“Down the hall,” Fedya said, and he was still sprawled there on the sheets when Zhenya returned, his thighs parted like Zhenya could slide right back in for a second go.

The dildo had gotten kicked down to the foot of the bed. Zhenya picked it up and sat cross-legged at Fedya’s side, examining the molded silicone. It wasn’t so big—smaller than Zhenya; a normal size, although for a long time he had thought he was thoroughly average, because the men in the porn he watched mostly looked like him.

“We don’t have to,” Fedya said gently. 

“I want to,” Zhenya said, because he did, but he worried he would look silly. It was so _pink_. And getting fucked with Fedya’s cock would be in large part for Fedya’s pleasure, but getting fucked with a dildo would be only for Zhenya’s. Seeing Fedya’s unabashed enjoyment had helped him; he knew Fedya wouldn’t think less of him for liking it. He only had his own judgment to fear: his own private thoughts about how men should be, what men shouldn’t do. 

“We can try it, and if you don’t like it, we’ll stop,” Fedya said. He rolled onto his side and took the dildo from Zhenya’s hand. “I didn’t like it at first. It hurt, the first time. But it got a lot better with practice.”

“I’ve had, uh. Fingers,” Zhenya said, willing himself not to blush. “I liked that.”

“Well, that’s a good sign,” Fedya said. He pushed up to kiss Zhenya. “I want you to like it. We’ll do what we can to make it good for you, okay?”

“Okay,” Zhenya said. His eyes stung. He didn’t deserve this: Fedya’s kindness, his patience. He had expected a quick rough fuck in a back room, with no tenderness or care, and had resigned himself to that. This was so much better that he almost felt ashamed, because he had done nothing to earn it.

Fedya put him on his hands and knees, which made him feel exposed but let him hide his face in the pillow. He waited, tense, listening to the sounds of Fedya opening the bottle of lube, the crinkle of a condom wrapper. He jerked at the first wet touch of Fedya’s thumb again his hole, circling gently.

“Shh, I’m just touching you,” Fedya said. He squeezed some lube directly on Zhenya’s hole and pushed his thumb inside, going slowly but not stopping. It felt just as weird as it had before, and Zhenya squirmed a little, ready to burst from his skin. Fedya had made all of this look so easy, and Zhenya wanted to whine and pull away and beg from only a single finger.

Fedya went so slowly. He fucked Zhenya with his thumb, slow drags in and out, until some of the weirdness subsided. Zhenya realized he was getting hard again, and maybe it was the idea of it more than the feeling, the mortifying eroticism of the position, the thought of what was going to come next, but he was turned on no matter what the reason. He liked it.

“You ready for another?” Fedya asked him, and Zhenya swallowed around his dry tongue and managed to say, “Okay.”

Fedya pulled out and added more lube, and pushed back in with two fingers, more of a stretch. Zhenya breathed in and out and squeezed the pillow in his hands and felt himself opening around Fedya’s fingers, his body yielding, the back of his neck prickling. Fedya moved his fingers in and out and curled them in some way and Zhenya muffled his moan in the pillow. He reached down with one hand to tease at the head of his dick, bringing himself back to full hardness.

“Feels good?” Fedya said, not smug or mocking but like he wanted to know Zhenya’s answer.

“Yeah,” Zhenya said. He turned his face to the side so that he wouldn’t get a mouth full of pillowcase. “I think—will you do it?”

“Gladly,” Fedya said. His fingers slid out. Zhenya heard the lube open again, and then the round head of the dildo stroked over his hole, rubbing circles just as Fedya’s thumb had. His hips jerked forward, away from it, and then he sucked in a breath and forced himself to still. “Good,” Fedya said, “take a breath and push out,” and then it was sliding into him, stretching, burning, and Zhenya took another breath, and another, curling his toes in the sheets, fighting to stay relaxed, to not tense against the intrusion.

It wasn’t so bad. Fedya pushed all the way in and stopped, giving Zhenya a chance to adjust, and the initial sting faded. He clenched a few times, flushing at the way he was held open. “Fedya,” he said, startled by the sound of his own voice, high and uneven.

Fedya’s free hand slid along the length of his dick. “Do you like this? It feels like you do.”

“Yeah,” Zhenya said, the only word he could force out of his tight throat. He shifted his hips forward and then back, an abortive, shocky movement. The prickling at his nape had grown worse. He didn’t feel fully anchored in his body anymore, drawn out of himself by the sensations searing through him. He arched his back, pushing his dick into the circle of Fedya’s hand.

Fedya kept his hand there, loosely clasping Zhenya’s dick, and slowly drew out the dildo until only the head was inside. “Deep breath,” he said, and pushed back in, both worse and better because this time Zhenya knew how it would feel. The blunt drag inside him was spine-melting, and then Fedya rotated the dildo as he pulled it out again, and Zhenya made a noise he had never heard himself make before, and pushed his hot face into the pillow.

“Keep breathing,” Fedya said, and kept fucking Zhenya so slowly and gently, until finally Zhenya began pushing back into each thrust, working himself on the dildo and pushing forward into Fedya’s hand. Fedya sped up, then, shoving in deep, giving Zhenya exactly what he wanted, that he hadn’t known he wanted. It felt better than he had hoped it would, and he realized he was going to come, and probably soon, and pretty hard, and he pushed up onto his hands and said, “Fedya—”

“Should I stop?” Fedya asked.

“No,” Zhenya said. “No, please, I need,” and Fedya tightened his hand around Zhenya’s cock and said, “Do it, whatever you need.”

Zhenya didn’t know what he needed. He moved his hips in time with Fedya’s thrusts, and reached down to knock Fedya’s hand out of the way and take over, jerking himself how he liked, tighter and faster than Fedya had been doing it. He was coiled tight, right on the edge, and he hovered in that perfect ecstatic moment right before it all tipped over. But then it did, and he made a mess all over Fedya’s sheets.

He dropped down onto his elbows again and panted into the pillow. He felt like gelatin, wobbling slowly inside his skin. He could have moved, but he didn’t feel like it.

Fedya stroked his hip. “I’m taking it out now,” he said, and Zhenya breathed out as Fedya slid the dildo from his ass, as weird going out as it had been going in. But good, too.

Fedya’s feet creaked across the wood floor as he went down the hall to the bathroom. By the time he returned, Zhenya had managed to turn over onto his back, still limp and rubbery, but feeling a little more coherent.

Fedya smiled at him and joined him on the bed, lying down beside him and kissing him once and again. He reached between Zhenya’s thighs to gently rub his hole, tender now, a little sore. “Do you feel okay?”

“I feel really good,” Zhenya said. He reached up and ran a hand through Fedya’s messy hair, tidying it back into place. “Thank you. It was just what I wanted.”

“Happy to be of service,” Fedya said, and gave him another kiss. “If you’d like, I’ll make you that cocktail I promised you.”

“I’d like that,” Zhenya said, but it was still another few minutes before either of them moved.

They dragged themselves out of bed at last. Zhenya sat at the tiny drop-leaf table in the kitchen, wearing nothing but his underwear, and watched Fedya moving around the room to open cabinets and take out bottles and glasses. He had put on a dressing gown but hadn’t bothered to tie the sash, and every time he turned around, Zhenya was treated to a view of his soft cock and the soft curve of his stomach.

“I’ll make it extra sweet, just for you,” Fedya said, pouring some red liquid into a cocktail shaker. “You seem like the type.”

“I was drinking whiskey at the bar, wasn’t I?” Zhenya said. He wasn’t too concerned about defending his masculinity, not when Fedya had so gratifyingly come on his dick.

“Ah, Zhenya,” Fedya said. “There’s a difference between doing it and liking it.” He winked, and poured in a generous portion of vodka.

“I guess so,” Zhenya said. He waited for Fedya to shake the cocktail and pour it into two glasses, and then he followed Fedya into the living room. The couch was upholstered in navy velvet, and Zhenya loved it. He wanted one just like it. The apartment looked like a home: worn-in, well-loved. Zhenya made a nosy circuit of the room as Fedya settled on the sofa. The wide windowsill was covered with plants and framed photographs, travel shots, a picture of an elderly white-muzzled dog, and over and over, Fedya and a red-haired man, their arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling at each other, posing in a photo booth, holding hands in front of a mural of a rainbow painted on a brick wall.

“Who’s this?” Zhenya asked.

“My partner,” Fedya said, calm as could be. “Mikhail.”

“Your—oh,” Zhenya said. He turned to look toward the front door of the apartment, like the fabled Misha would burst through right then to drag him out onto the street. “Is he, uh. Where is he tonight?”

“He lives in St. Petersburg,” Fedya said. “A year-long assignment for work.” He sipped his drink and gave Zhenya an amused look. “Don’t look so scandalized, we have an agreement. I’ll call him tomorrow and tell him all about your little peach of an ass.”

“My _what_ ,” Zhenya said, trying to sound outraged, when really he was relieved. He liked Fedya; he was glad he wasn’t a cheater.

Fedya was smirking at him. Zhenya joined him on the couch and tried his drink. It was sweet, and very good.

“How did you meet him?” Zhenya asked.

“Oh—at a bar,” Fedya said, his face softening with the memory. “He hit on me. It was supposed to be a one-night thing, but he talked me into sleeping over, and then he talked me into staying for breakfast in the morning, and by the time I left I had given him my phone number and agreed to go on a date with him. I’m still not sure how it happened.”

“He must have been very persuasive,” Zhenya said, charmed by this description. “How long have you been together?”

Fedya gazed at him over the rim of his glass. “You’re very curious, aren’t you?”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Zhenya said, his face heating. It was just—they looked happy, in their pictures. In love. He had seen it in Fedya’s face, when he said _my partner_ : the deep settled pride of a marriage.

Fedya considered him for a moment longer, and then he said, “Almost nine years. We were quite young when we met. There were some ups and downs at first, but we’re old and boring now.” His eyes lingered thoughtfully on Zhenya’s face. “Moscow isn’t a terrible place to be gay, you know. As long as you’re discreet, it’s not so hard to have a good life.”

Zhenya swirled his drink in his glass, watching the ice cubes clink gently against each other. He could buy an apartment in Moscow, if he wanted to. There was no reason he had to spend every summer in Magnitogorsk, which he still loved but found stifling now, oppressed by how everyone wanted to talk with him and tell him their opinions about him leaving for the NHL. He had won the Calder, as Sasha had predicted, so at least he could defend himself in that way, that he hadn’t utterly failed.

“Do you miss him?” he asked.

“Every day,” Fedya said. “It’s been six months, so only another six to go. The opportunity was too good to turn down. He would have stayed if I wanted him to, but I told him to go. It hasn’t been so bad.” He grinned. “And now I get to enjoy initiating every twink in Moscow, so there’s that.”

Zhenya scowled. “I’m not a twink.”

“My mistake,” Fedya said dryly, laughing at Zhenya with his eyes. “Come on, finish your drink. You can sleep here, if you’d like. I’ll even feed you in the morning before I kick you out.”

Zhenya had a hotel room waiting for him, with a bed much bigger than Fedya’s, and air conditioning, and free breakfast in the lobby every morning. But he liked the thought of spending the night in Fedya’s bed, in his apartment that was a home, full of love and a happy, settled life. That kind of life had seemed so close and easy when he was with Kristya, and now it seemed impossible and distant. He could be close to that dream again, just for one night, tucked inside Fedya’s life.

“That would be nice,” he said. “Thank you.”

“I’m a mediocre cook at best, I’m warning you now,” Fedya said.

Zhenya smiled. “I’ll take my chances,” he said.

\+ + +

He sucked Fedya’s dick in the morning before they got out of bed: the bright summer sun streaming through the window, Fedya’s hands gently petting his hair. At first he couldn’t coordinate his hand and his mouth, and he took Fedya too deep a few times and gagged unattractively. His jaw ached. His lips felt stretched and tender. He drooled a lot, maybe too much, spit sliding down Fedya’s dick and coating Zhenya’s fingers, curled around the base. Fedya had insisted on a condom, and the only thing Zhenya could taste was latex. But Fedya smelled as good as he had imagined, warm and musky, and he bobbed his head and listened to Fedya’s breathless encouragements and loved it, everything about it.

Fedya pulled him off at the end, and stripped off the condom to bring himself over. Zhenya laid his head on Fedya’s thigh and mouthed at his balls and listened to him groaning as he came. His ass was a little bit sore. He would feel it all day, walking around Moscow, window shopping and thinking wistfully of the day he would have enough money to buy those expensive things, and then remembering that he did have enough money, now. 

Fedya’s hand landed in Zhenya’s hair again. “Not bad for a first try.”

“I can’t believe how mean you are,” Zhenya said, too happy to be bothered at all.

Fedya gave him breakfast and a cup of coffee and patted his ass at the door when they said goodbye. Zhenya walked to the Metro station, dressed in last night’s going-out clothes, doing the same walk of shame he saw other people doing, women teetering in their very high heels, men with creased and untucked shirts. Zhenya felt no shame about it. He slid on his sunglasses and turned his face into the sunlight as the city came alive all around him.

 

### The City of Bridges

He saw Sid for the first time at the rink, a few days after he returned, during an informal skate that Seryozha dragged him to despite Zhenya’s protests about his jet lag. Sid greeted him with a blinding smile and a one-armed hug, and Zhenya knew his face was the same shade of red as a McDonald’s sign. He had thought about Sid all summer, and now here he was again, tanned, bigger, his hair longer and curling, smiling at Zhenya and saying, “Good to be back, eh?”

“Yes,” Zhenya said, and right then, it was.

“Congrats on the Calder,” Sid said. “And Worlds.”

Zhenya grimaced. “Only bronze.”

“It’s still something, eh?” Sid said, which was bullshit; he wouldn’t have been satisfied with bronze, either.

“Congrats on Hart and captain,” Zhenya said, and had the eternally delightful experience of watching Sid blush. He leaned in and bumped Sid, who didn’t move at all; he was like a boulder. “Good season, okay? With captain.”

“Gonna do my best,” Sid said. He was already the best, but he would never believe it or stop trying to be better. He had higher standards for himself than anyone else did.

Being around him again eased Zhenya into the season, through the initial unpleasant weeks of regaining lost ground with his English and the low-level irritation of adjusting to new linemates. He paid attention during team meetings. He only slacked off a little bit in the weight room, a reasonable amount. He didn’t fight with Sasha during the first game against the Capitals, even though Sasha had assaulted Genya over the summer and fully deserved Zhenya’s wrath. He was trying not to dwell about that too much, because any thought of Sasha still made him burn with shame.

He was on good behavior. He didn’t hook up, and he hardly even looked at anyone who wasn’t Sid. But in November, in New York, they went out after the game, because they didn’t fly out until the morning, and Zhenya let himself look too long at a guy with big arms and a lot of tattoos, and the guy looked back. Zhenya wouldn’t call himself an expert at gay sex—Fedya was the last guy he had slept with, months ago now—but he had enough experience to know what that look meant.

A hot thrill ran through him. They had lost, and he was mad about that, as always, and sex was a surefire way to burn out those feelings. Nobody was paying attention to him, because nobody ever did. Most of the guys were a little drunk. The bar they had chosen was crowded and noisy and half the team had dispersed to play pool or darts or try to talk to girls. Seryozha was back at the hotel, and nobody else would notice if Zhenya slipped off for a while. Fantasies could only keep him going for so long; he was twenty-one, and he liked sex, and he was growing tired of the exclusive company of his own hand.

He watched the guy and rubbed his drinking straw over his lower lip, aiming for seductive and hoping he landed somewhere close. The guy raised his eyebrows and tipped his head toward the back of the bar, a clear invitation and one Zhenya decided at once to accept.

He met the guy in the dark, narrow hallway leading to the bathrooms, and it was all easy, a transaction they carried out mostly with their bodies. Zhenya got his dick sucked in the handicapped bathroom, and returned the favor with a handjob, because the floor looked sticky and he liked his jeans. When they were done, Zhenya listened for voices out in the hallway before he would let the guy open the door, and he followed behind, shoulders hunched, hiding his face as much as he could, in case anyone was there.

Someone was waiting in the hall, head down, typing on his phone. Zhenya hunched further as he went past, trying to avoid notice, but a hand caught his upper arm, yanking him back and then holding him in place.

“Geno?” Sid said uncertainly.

The adrenaline rush was instant and nauseating. It was the same feeling as Sasha on top of him in the hotel room: the sick, terrifying sense of being discovered, like an oyster with the shell pried open, bared to the light. Everything Zhenya was made of was exposed to Sid in that instant. He had nowhere to hide.

Could he laugh it off, like he had failed to do with Sasha and then Seryozha? He had experience, now; he could make some excuse. But as he forced himself to look up and meet Sid’s eyes, he could see that it was already too late for that.

The guy who had sucked Zhenya’s dick had continued on down the hallway. Zhenya glanced desperately in his direction, hoping for some assistance, but he turned the corner and was gone without ever looking back.

Zhenya shouldn’t have looked, because Sid saw him looking, and his expression grew even worse: more certain, more disgusted. Zhenya had never imagined Sid looking at him like that, and it hurt in the same way that his father’s disappointment had hurt him, in the aftermath of leaving Magnitka. He had failed someone whose opinion he cared about. But it was also worse, because his father had been upset about something Zhenya had done, and Sid was upset about something Zhenya _was_.

“Geno,” Sid said. “You were—with that guy?”

“No,” Zhenya said, because he might as well deny it, even though he and Sid both knew he was lying. 

Sid seemed to realize then that he was still clutching Zhenya’s arm. He jerked his hand back and stuffed it in his pocket, and Zhenya had the sour, stomach-turning thought that he wanted to wipe it on his pants, like Zhenya was as unpleasant to touch as the sticky bathroom floor.

“I didn’t know you, uh,” Sid said. 

Zhenya’s fear and humiliation boiled over into rage. Why did Sid think he deserved to know anything about what Zhenya did with his dick? “Why, you tell? Say whole team, I see Geno, so gross—”

“I don’t think it’s gross,” Sid said, but his expression said that he did.

Zhenya couldn’t bear it. “You don’t say,” he demanded.

“No, I’m—I won’t say anything,” Sid said. He chewed on his lip for a moment. “Just—you gotta be careful. Anyone could’ve seen you.”

Zhenya refused to listen to Sid lecture him about this. He turned around and left: out of the bar and back the few blocks to the hotel, the wind blowing cold against his overheated face, back to his hotel room, empty now with Talbo still at the bar. There was a painting on the wall, rounded abstract shapes in purples and yellows. Zhenya lay on the bed and stared at it until the shapes blurred away into nothing, and there was nothing left in the room but the repeated ragged sound of his breath.

\+ + +

For once, Zhenya was one of the first to make it downstairs for breakfast. He hadn’t slept well. He watched the rest of the team trickle in: first the old guys, including Seryozha, who sat down across from Zhenya with a wordless grunt and applied himself to his eggs; then the guys who had gone out last night. He heard Sid before he saw him, his stupid laugh out in the hall before he came in, and sat up, hopeful, ready to make eye contact with Sid and smile and be reassured that it was okay.

Maybe Sid had only been surprised. He needed some time to get used to the idea, but then he would approach Zhenya after practice and sheepishly apologize for being weird, he just hadn’t expected it, could they put the whole thing behind them? And then things would go back to normal: Sid grinning at Zhenya in the weight room, sliding by him on the ice during warmups to slyly whack his stick against Zhenya’s legs. Teammates, friends. Someone Zhenya knew.

Sid came in with Staalsy, shaking his head about something, his hair wet with what Zhenya knew from experience was a combination of water and gel. Zhenya held his breath and waited.

But Sid didn’t look at him. He got in line at the buffet and loaded his plate and sat all the way on the other end of the room, as far away as he could get. Zhenya told himself it meant nothing. Sid didn’t care where he sat unless it was for breakfast or lunch the day of a game. He and Zhenya weren’t typically meal companions. But it meant something that Sid kept his head down throughout the meal, focused on his plate instead of talking and looking around the way he usually did, like he had to be sure everyone was in attendance and eating enough, a shepherd checking on his flock. Zhenya kept glancing at him, but Sid didn’t meet his gaze even once.

“You’re twitchy,” Seryozha told him. 

“Just ready to get home,” Zhenya said, and forced himself to stop obsessing and finish his potatoes. 

He waited on the bus and on the flight home for Sid to say something—or not even say something, because they didn’t usually talk while they were traveling, but to give some indication, a smile or a pack of candy tossed down the aisle for Zhenya to noisily eat while Seryozha gave him silent disapproving glances. He waited as they deplaned in Pittsburgh for Sid to hang back, fall in step with him, say a few quiet words. 

It didn’t happen. Sid got in his car without a backward glance, and Zhenya went home with Seryozha and lay on the couch in the basement and let Albert knead tiny pinpricks into his chest.

Maybe Sid had only been dwelling on the game. It had been wild, with multiple fights, and Sid hated the Flyers even more than Zhenya did. He carried that hope with him to skate the next morning, before they played the Devils, but Sid ignored him too thoroughly for it to be anything but deliberate. He didn’t meet Zhenya’s eyes even once.

Zhenya lingered on the ice after skate, waiting until everyone else had gone down the tunnel. Sid was practicing trick shots, his typical obsessive grinding away at things nobody else spent any time on. Zhenya skated over to him, looping around in wide circles and then progressively narrowing his radius until there was no chance Sid didn’t notice him, the movement of his body and the sound of his blades slicing through the ice.

“You’re kinda in my way, G,” Sid said at last, when Zhenya cut between him and the net.

Zhenya’s pride was bitter in his mouth as he swallowed it down. “You don’t talk?”

“Don’t really know what there is to talk about,” Sid said. His mouth was a flat line. He stared down at the ice, scraping the blade of his stick against a divot someone’s skate had chipped out.

Zhenya stopped abruptly, snowing him. Sid didn’t react. Fury battered in Zhenya’s chest, frantic and too big for that small space. Would Sid ever look at him again? Zhenya wanted to drag him to the ice and hit him until he had to look up: his first NHL fight, a brutal, unobserved tussle, uninterrupted by officials or teammates, that wouldn’t end until one of them bled.

“I told you I wouldn’t say anything,” Sid said, when Zhenya didn’t go away.

Zhenya made a frustrated noise he couldn’t hold back. He wasn’t worried about _that_. “You act weird,” he said.

Sid dug with his stick, loosening choppy crushed ice. “Just not the kind of thing you expect to learn about a guy.”

“We still friends?” Zhenya asked, his throat tight.

Sid finally, finally looked at him then, just for a moment, his expression tight and hard before he looked away again. “I gotta finish these drills.”

“Fine,” Zhenya said. That was that. It wasn’t like they had ever really been friends.

He slammed the door behind him as he passed through the boards into the tunnel. It closed with a satisfying crash that echoed through the arena, the sound bouncing off the high domed ceiling before it faded out.

\+ + +

He hadn’t ever thought about what would happen if Sid found out, because Sid finding out was impossible, as likely as Zhenya sprouting wings or taking up embroidery. But if someone had asked him, he would have said that Sid would be kind about it, the way he was kind about everything. Awkward, probably; not sure what to say. But accepting.

He hadn’t called Zhenya any bad names. That was something.

After all of his dread and anxiety, telling Seryozha and Ksusha had gone so well. They didn’t treat him any differently, except that Ksusha had asked him if he met anyone nice over the summer, carefully avoiding any pronouns. He had started to think about telling his parents, or at least hinting around a little to see what they thought about it before he made any grand proclamations. He had never heard them say anything disparaging about gay people. Maybe they would be open to it, or could be in time.

But he had never heard Sid say anything disparaging, either, and yet he had looked at Zhenya like he was reassessing everything about their relationship, like seeing Zhenya come out of the bathroom with that guy had changed everything he thought about Zhenya for the worse. Sid hadn’t said the words, but Zhenya had seen them in the sideways twist of his mouth.

Zhenya searched every day for some sign that Sid was thawing, but it never came. Sid iced him out patiently and thoroughly, the way he did everything. He never picked the bike next to Zhenya’s while they warmed up. He sat silently at his stall, inspecting his shin guards, while Flower and Talbo taught Zhenya swear words in French. He still passed to Zhenya on the ice, and said encouraging things during practice, and somehow nobody seemed to notice that anything was different, not even Seryozha, who was usually obnoxiously perceptive when it came to Zhenya’s moods and the subtle social dynamics of the locker room.

Maybe it wasn’t that dramatic of a difference. It was only that before, Zhenya’s crush had magnified every sideways grin, every word said in passing, and every incidental meeting of the eyes while everyone laughed over Flower’s latest prank. Sid liked playing hockey with him and having him on the team, and had been vocal about that since Zhenya was still in the Superleague, and he had allowed his wishful heart to interpret Sid’s professional approval as a sign of some special regard. Sid’s pulling back felt cataclysmic, but it sunk into the team’s daily routine without a ripple. Zhenya was the only one who felt the waves.

The worst part was Sid’s newfound locker room modesty. He started keeping his base layers on in the room until he went to shower, and then wearing a towel in the change room, sometimes with a second towel draped over his shoulders. Zhenya felt guilty and ashamed every time he saw Sid’s towel, and predatory, and also angry at Sid’s presumption, because who said Zhenya even wanted to look at him? But he couldn’t work up too much righteous indignation, because he _had_ looked, and would probably still be looking if Sid hadn’t removed the option. 

Maybe Sid had caught him looking but hadn’t thought anything of it until he learned that Zhenya liked it.

Hockey was no solace to him anymore, because every time he went to the rink, he saw Sid, and had to confront what had happened. What he had done. What _Sid_ had done, because as the weeks wore on, Zhenya’s humiliation faded and was replaced by a growing anger. Fedya had shown him that he could have what he wanted and not be ashamed, and he didn’t want to return to the self-loathing he had felt for so many years, when he was trying to ignore his amorphous feelings. There were many ways to be a man.

His contract was up in two years, and then he could go anywhere, probably—he thought that any team would at least consider taking him. He didn’t have to stay in Pittsburgh as the target of Sid’s wordless antipathy. He was an old hand at walking away from his team.

In early December, the team went on a road trip to western Canada, and in Vancouver, the night before the game, Zhenya saw a guy eyeing him from the bar while they were out at dinner. The nauseating horror of coming out of the bathroom and seeing Sid in the hallway was still fresh in his mind; he hadn’t thought of hooking up in the month since that night. And the guy wasn’t really his type: long hair, dressed all in black, the kind of person who wanted to drink cocktails and argue about philosophy. Some of Kristya’s friends had been like that, and Zhenya had no patience for it. But Sid had been sitting at his elbow all evening without saying one word to him, and Zhenya stood up, letting his chair scrape across the floor, and went over to the bar.

The guy turned his back as Zhenya approached and shot a coy look over his shoulder. Zhenya wasn’t really into it, but he wasn’t planning to leave with this guy or do anything other than chat with him at the bar for a few minutes.

There was enough of a crowd at the bar that Zhenya had to wait for a woman to step away with her drink before he could wedge himself in beside the guy. He wasn’t smooth with women, but he had learned how to fake it; so he could fake it with this guy, long enough to dig himself a hole he couldn’t ever climb out of.

The guy grinned at Zhenya around his cocktail straw. “Hi there.”

“Hi,” Zhenya said. He turned, his back against the bar, leaning into the guy and watching Sid at the table. Sid wasn’t looking at him, although surely had had noticed Zhenya get up. “What’s you name?”

“Ooh, an accent,” the guy said. “I like it. I’m Santiago.”

“Zhenya,” Zhenya said, and they shook hands. Zhenya let his hand linger in Santiago’s and grinned at the way Santiago fluttered his eyelashes. He felt a spike of guilt for the way he was using Santiago to spite Sid, or make a point, or whatever it was he was doing. He said, “I’m with friends, so. Just like to say hi.”

“Can’t talk you into going home with me, huh,” Santiago said. “That’s okay. I’ll still let you buy me a drink.”

It was the least Zhenya could do. He slid a twenty across the bar and Santiago received something pink in a martini glass that looked like it was probably delicious. Santiago caught his longing glance and offered him a sip, laughing. It was sweet and good, and tasted a little bit like grapefruit. He would never be able to order something like that without the team chirping him about it until the end of time.

“Where are you from, Zhenya?” Santiago asked, doing a passable job with the pronunciation. He was trying, at least, which was more than Zhenya could say for most North Americans.

“Russia,” Zhenya said. “Very cold.”

“Oh, do you wear one of those cute little fur hats?” Santiago asked.

Zhenya was charmed. “Only, like. Dress special.”

“Well, I’ll use my imagination,” Santiago said.

Santiago wasn’t at all the philosophical snob Zhenya had expected. He was easy to talk to, and he laughed freely and kept touching Zhenya’s arm. Zhenya forgot his original purpose until he happened to glance aside and caught sight of Sid’s staring face.

His first reaction was a hot rush of shame. He fought it down. He was only talking. Not even Sid could fault his behavior. He held Sid’s gaze for a deliberate moment and then just as deliberately looked back at Santiago, leaning into him ever so slightly. Santiago beamed at him. Zhenya hoped Sid was burning.

But even spite couldn’t make him forget that he was in public, and anyone on the team could look over and see what he was doing. A conversation was harmless—fans were everywhere, and Zhenya didn’t get recognized often but it wasn’t unheard of—but Santiago was touching him too much for their interaction to be strictly friendly.

“Have to go,” Zhenya said at last, and gestured vaguely toward the team’s table. “Friends.”

“Nothing gold can stay,” Santiago said inexplicably. He smiled at Zhenya. “Thanks for the drink.”

Zhenya went back to the table. Sid met his eyes and flushed, and dropped his head to stare at his plate, empty except for a few shreds of lettuce. Zhenya reclaimed the seat beside him and said, “Okay?”

Sid turned to Whits on his other side and started talking. Zhenya, grimly satisfied, applied himself to his few remaining French fries.

The whole incident was nothing: a ten-minute conversation and a brief staredown with Sid. Nobody had paid any attention. But on the walk back to the hotel, in the paradoxical privacy of the team all around them, Seryozha said, “What was that at the restaurant tonight?”

“What do you mean?” Zhenya said. Seryozha liked to ask vague questions and wait for Zhenya to dig a hole for himself with his response. He had learned to play dumb and make Seryozha clarify his position.

“You were flirting with that boy at the bar,” Seryozha said.

Zhenya shrugged and tugged his scarf up around his chin. The temperature was hovering right around freezing, and his jacket wasn’t warm enough. “So what? Nobody pays any attention. We were only talking.”

“Sid was paying attention,” Seryozha said. “I’m not telling you what to do. But think about whether you’re ready for the team to know.”

Zhenya stared down at his feet scuffing along the sidewalk. Sid was a painful bruise very close to his heart. He could say nothing, and Seryozha would leave it alone. He said, “Sid knows. He—I did something stupid last month. He caught me.”

“Oh, Zhenya,” Seryozha said. He leaned sideways on his next step, bumping his shoulder against Zhenya’s.

“I know I need to be careful,” Zhenya said. His throat was tight. “It isn’t fair that I have to be careful. I hate it. But Sid won’t even look at me now, he’s barely talked to me in a month, and I wish I hadn’t ever—I know I should be able to control myself.”

“He took it badly?” Seryozha said. He sounded surprised, and when Zhenya glanced at him, he looked it, too, his eyebrows raised. “There are certainly people on the team I would expect that from, but not Sid.”

“I know,” Zhenya said miserably. “I didn’t think—but it’s been. It sucks.”

“What are you guys saying about Sid?” Talbo cut in.

“We’re talking about how he’s much less annoying than you are,” Seryozha said, tart as a sour apple, and then continued in Russian, ignoring Talbo’s protests, “This is Sid’s problem, not yours. You don’t always make good decisions, but you’re young and you’re in a difficult position. It’s understandable. If Sid has been treating you poorly, the only person I think less of is him.”

Zhenya swallowed and blinked back a hot prickle of tears. Seryozha’s unwavering, mildly disapproving support meant so much to him, and he didn’t know how to ever say that. Instead, he said, “It _is_ my problem, though. It’s Sid’s team. If I have problems with him, he’s not the one who will leave.”

“Well,” Seryozha said, which meant he knew Zhenya was right. He reached up and clasped Zhenya’s shoulder. There was nothing more to be said.

Zhenya liked to think of himself as a realist. He knew how this could go, and how it might end, with him in a different city and away from the Gonchars, who by now were like family to him. He could lose the team and the familiarity of Pittsburgh. But it wouldn’t be his fault; he refused to blame himself for Sid’s reaction. It was out of his hands now.

\+ + +

After that road trip, they had one home game and then another road trip to New York and Boston, and then it was basically Christmas. The day after they got back from the West Coast, Robs and his wife held the team holiday party at their house. Zhenya didn’t want to go, but these things were never optional. He reluctantly put on a nice sweater and climbed in the back seat of the Gonchars’ car: him and Natasha, the children of the family.

The road in front of the house was already lined with cars when they arrived, and the house was filled with people, the teammates Zhenya knew and the wives and children he didn’t. Moments after he walked in the door, two small children collided with his legs and spent several frozen seconds staring up at him in mute fright before they skittered off. He needed a drink.

He wandered around the house, searching for the kitchen. Robs had a nice place, comfortable and filled with signs of his family, pictures on all the walls and dog toys in a basket at the foot of the stairs. The living room was packed; he skirted around it, ignoring Talbo waving at him from near the fireplace. He saw a green plant hanging in the doorway and had learned from a weird incident with Staalsy last Christmas to be wary. He didn’t want to get involved in that.

He spotted Sid’s dark head as he went by, talking to a few people Zhenya didn’t know, and kind of craning his neck around to track Zhenya’s progress. Their eyes met. Sid’s shoulders lifted toward his ears, like he had to protect himself from Zhenya’s gaze.

Fuck him. He shouldn’t be looking, then.

The kitchen was packed, too, but at least there was a punch bowl. Zhenya squeezed through clusters of talking people he vaguely recognized and poured himself a generous glass. He hated these parties; it was too loud and he couldn’t understand anyone, and he spent the whole time plaintively making eye contact with Seryozha until it was finally time to go home. He had spent the last team party eating cookies in a corner with Natasha.

He found an empty sunroom in the back of the house where a second Christmas tree had been set up. Unlike the one in the living room, this was inexpertly decorated, probably by Robs’s kids, with homemade arts-and-crafts decorations like the ones Natasha brought home from preschool. Zhenya sat with his punch and watched the glow of the lights. Christmas wasn’t celebrated like this in Russia, and not until January anyway, but all of the trapping were very much like those from every New Year’s, but different enough to make Zhenya’s homesickness painfully sharp. He missed his parents. He wouldn’t spend New Year’s in Russia again until he retired.

A creaking floorboard caught his attention. He looked over, and Sid was there in the doorway, holding a punch glass of his own and wearing a sweater with a reindeer on it. His hair had been gelled into thorough submission, like a crisp wet helmet covering his head. 

Zhenya stared at him, waiting for Sid to realize who he’d come across and go back the way he came. Instead Sid took the single step down into the room and said, “Hey, uh. I’ve been looking for you.”

Zhenya hoped his expression conveyed his skepticism. Sid had barely talked to him in more than a month. What could he possibly want to talk about now? Was he going to try to explain himself? Zhenya didn’t want to hear it. There was no justification for Sid’s behavior that he could think of.

Sid sat beside him on the couch and set his glass on the table. They looked in silence at the tree, the big gleaming star on top and the multicolored strands of lights. Sid’s knee jumped rhythmically. He wasn’t usually a fidgeter; he was agitated about something, and Zhenya waited for him to spit it out, whatever it was.

But Sid didn’t say anything, only jiggled in silence. The tension was unbearable. Zhenya said, “Sid, what you want?”

Sid turned toward him. His eyes searched Zhenya’s face, although Zhenya didn’t have any inkling what Sid was looking for. Then, abruptly and with no warning, he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Zhenya’s.

Zhenya jerked back, too surprised to feel anything at all. Of all the myriad things Sid could have said or done, Zhenya would never have expected that.

Sid said his name and leaned forward and kissed him again, because that was what he was doing: kissing Zhenya on Robs’s couch, in front of his Christmas tree. There was no suspicious plant hanging overhead: Zhenya had checked. Maybe this was a cruel prank, and the rest of the team would flood into the room in another minute to laugh at him, and thinking of that made Zhenya move back again, farther away this time, out of Sid’s reach.

Sid was bright red and breathing hard. They watched each other warily. Zhenya tried to think of something to say, but his mind was a confused blank. He couldn’t bring his thoughts into any kind of order.

“Geno, uh,” Sid said at last. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Are you. I thought you might want to.”

Fury replaced the numbness. Zhenya scoffed, filling the sound with as much disdain as he could manage. “You think? You don’t talk all month—”

“I was just—it surprised me,” Sid said. He tried to run a hand through his hair and was thwarted by the gel. “But I thought.” He glanced down at his lap and then sidelong at Zhenya. “You like it, right?”

Like _what_ , Zhenya wanted to say. But he knew what Sid meant: guys, being with guys. As if there were any uncertainty about that. He said, “Yes. I like.”

“I think.” Sid looked at his lap again and drew in a deep breath, his shoulders lifting with it. “I think I might like it, too.”

Zhenya got up and went over to the tree, closely inspecting one of the ornaments without seeing it at all. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been so angry. He’d been miserable about Sid for a month, and now Sid wanted to—use him to _experiment_ , like it was a fun game, like Zhenya was a walking penis and not a person with feelings that had been badly hurt. 

When had Sid decided that what he was feeling was intrigue and not disgust? For how many weeks had he been thinking about this and still shutting Zhenya out? Maybe he hadn’t realized until he saw Zhenya talking to that guy in Vancouver, but Zhenya wasn’t sure he was willing to be that charitable. 

“How you think?” he asked, his back still turned to Sid. He didn’t know the words to say what he wanted to, a scathing list of sex acts Sid might have considered. Had Sid thought about sucking Zhenya’s dick? Had he thought about going down on all fours and letting Zhenya fuck his ass? What exactly did he think was going to happen? But he couldn’t say any of that except in a fragmented muddle, and all the power of his rage would be lost. He should have studied English more over the summer, or at all. He said, “I don’t do.”

“We could try it,” Sid said. Zhenya turned to scowl at him, and he looked so earnest: good boy Sidney Crosby, who signed every autograph without complaining and never swore where the press could hear it. “Would you like to?”

Zhenya’s fury reached new heights. Oh, _try it_. Sid would screw him once, decide he wasn’t into it, and Zhenya would have to spend the rest of his life with that memory. And he knew now how Sid would treat him, like an embarrassing mistake, never acknowledged. 

“I know you’re mad,” Sid said. “I’m sorry I’ve been acting weird. I was just, uh.” He shrugged, pulling his shoulders up toward his ears. “I needed some time to think about it.”

And meanwhile he had left Zhenya to dangle, thinking he was going to have to leave the team, that Sid would never talk to him again.

“We’re friends, right?” Sid said, horribly sincere, his eyes fixed on Zhenya’s face, big and dark and earnest and gentle. “It might be fun. Don’t you think? We could give it a shot.”

 _We still friends?_ Zhenya had asked Sid, right after it happened, and Sid hadn’t answered him. They were friends when it was convenient for him, when it would get him what he wanted. Zhenya’s dick, apparently. For the time being.

“Go fuck yourself,” Zhenya said in Russian, and left his punch glass on the coffee table when he walked out of the room.

\+ + +

Sid texted him a couple of times that night, and again in the morning before skate. Zhenya deleted all of the messages without going to the trouble of reading them. He didn’t care what Sid had to say. He stuck close to Seryozha at the arena before skate and again before the game, and Sid didn’t try to talk to him. Neither did anyone else; Zhenya’s bad mood was probably visible from space.

Sid’s towel made no appearance after the game. He was back to being naked, like he was inviting Zhenya to look at him. Zhenya didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t help himself. Sid’s nipples were unfairly puffy, begging to be bitten, and Zhenya kept glancing at the soft swing of Sid’s dick between his thighs. Sid would let him touch it, maybe suck it, which Zhenya hadn’t done since Fedya, over the summer, but thought about all the time.

If Sid had reacted differently in New York, if he had said even a single encouraging word, Zhenya would be in his bed already. He wasn’t proud of it. If Sid had talked to him afterward, Zhenya would have forgiven his initial reaction. If Sid had told him he was uncomfortable and needed some time to get used to the idea, Zhenya would have given him all the time in the world. But he couldn’t forgive Sid’s frosty silence, or the way he expected Zhenya to put that behind them. How was he supposed to forget?

He couldn’t and didn’t want to. They went on the road for six nights, and Sid spent the entire trip trying to catch Zhenya’s eye: at meals, on the plane when Zhenya walked by him to take a leak, in the gym after skate. Zhenya viciously ignored him, a perfect inversion of the past month, when Zhenya had been so desperate for Sid to look his way even once. 

Sid managed to corner him before the game in Boston by following him after two-touch, when Zhenya went to get his headphones from the locker room. There were other guys in the room, taping their sticks or sitting at their stalls doing their pre-game visualizations, and Zhenya hoped that might act as a deterrent. But instead Sid followed him to his own stall and sat down on the bench beside him and said, “Can we talk about this?”

“No,” Zhenya said. His headphones were buried somewhere deep in his bag. His fingertips touched the cord, but it was all tangled around something and he couldn’t fish the headset out. He swore and yanked at the cord.

“I get why you’re mad,” Sid said. He ducked his head. “I know I’ve been a dick to you. But if you won’t even talk to me—”

“Yeah, funny how that fucking works,” Zhenya said. He managed to extract his headphones at last, and said in English, “Bye, Sid.”

“Geno, come on,” Sid protested, but Zhenya didn’t care. He took his headphones and left.

It was easy to give Sid the brush-off, but much harder to rein in his thoughts. All of his fantasies about Sid flared back into vivid life, even worse than before. He had never, in all of his dreaming, imagined that Sid might be interested in him. The thought hadn’t ever crossed his mind. Before, when he thought about kissing Sid, it hadn’t been at all grounded in reality. The set-ups were flimsy; the details were unrealistic, like the entire team ignoring Zhenya on his knees for Sid in the locker room. 

But now that he knew Sid wanted it, or at least thought he wanted it, he began constructing elaborate, realistic scenarios, daydreaming about how the whole thing might play out in real life. Sid might drop by the house after practice and find Zhenya watching TV in the basement. Natasha would conveniently still be at school. Sid would try to make some small talk and gradually shift closer to Zhenya on the couch, and eventually Zhenya would get fed up and kiss him just to make him shut up, and then maybe he would put Sid on his knees and teach him to give a blowjob, the way Fedya had taught him. Zhenya was an expert now, after sucking dick a grand total of one time.

He was still angry. But he also hadn’t had sex with anyone in months, and he missed it. He was good at getting himself off, but he liked doing it with another person, getting to touch them and listen to their noises. Sid was a safe option because he had even more to lose than Zhenya did, and Zhenya was tempted by how easy it would be and how little he would have to worry. His working relationship with Sid was already in tatters, so why not add sex to the mix? How much worse could things possibly get?

But he didn’t want Sid to think he could act like that and still get to enjoy Zhenya’s experience and endowment. He didn’t want to reward Sid’s behavior. He grumpily jerked off and thought about Sid’s ass and the noises he might make if Zhenya touched him, and he hated everything, every feeling he had about it, the fact that he had any feelings at all. He wanted to scrape the inside of his heart clean of all emotion. 

He missed Sid: the Sid he’d thought he knew.

He spent his second Christmas in the US much as he had spent the first: lying around the house, eating too many cookies. He took Natasha to the public outdoor rink downtown to go skating, and Ksusha put him to work decorating the house for New Year’s. And he thought about Sid constantly and couldn’t seem to stop.

Sid had gone home for Christmas; he was back the day after, noisy and cheerful during practice, and looking at Zhenya again and again, trying to catch Zhenya’s attention, and finally Zhenya let him. He met Sid’s gaze from across the ice and held it: not smiling, not giving him any open encouragement, but he knew how Sid would take it.

Maybe Zhenya didn’t know Sid as well as he had thought, but he still knew him pretty well. Sid skated over during a hydration break and pulled up next to Zhenya along the boards. He glanced at Seryozha, standing at Zhenya’s other side, and said, “Uh, hey.”

“Oh, is he talking to you again?” Seryozha said in Russian.

Zhenya shrugged. “He seems to be.”

“I have a sudden ravenous thirst for Gatorade,” Seryozha said, and he went off and left Zhenya there with Sid.

Sid watched him leave. “Does he, uh,” he said, but didn’t finish his sentence. He leaned on his stick and stared out across the ice. “How was your Christmas?”

“Fine,” Zhenya said. He deliberately didn’t ask Sid the same question.

“Well. That’s good,” Sid said. He cleared his throat and finally turned his head to look at Zhenya. “Geno, listen. I’m really sorry. I was just—but I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

It was a better apology than Zhenya had expected. “Okay,” he said.

Sid heaved a sigh. “You’re still mad at me, eh?”

Zhenya lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He _was_ still mad, but Sid did sound genuinely sorry, and that helped. “It’s hard. You don’t talk. It sucks, okay? And then you—” He gestured with the hand that wasn’t holding his stick. He wasn’t going to say _You kissed me_ during practice. Even if nobody was listening.

Sid’s face turned red. He went back to staring into the middle distance. “I just thought. I don’t know. It was dumb.”

“I know,” Zhenya said. “Dumb.”

Sid snorted a laugh. “Glad you agree with me, I guess.” He glanced at Zhenya again. “So. Friends?”

Zhenya wasn’t ready to forgive Sid quite yet, but he also didn’t want to outright reject Sid’s peace offering. He was tired of being angry. And maybe he liked Pittsburgh; maybe he wanted to stay.

“Okay,” he said. Sid’s eyes widened, his face lighting with hope. Zhenya didn’t want to forgive him, but he didn’t have to; he could be hurt and angry but set it behind him and move forward. He kept his eyes on Sid’s face as he said, “We friends.”

\+ + +

There was no New Year’s celebration for him that year, but there was something better: an outdoor game, cooked up by the league for whatever reason, and the Penguins had been selected. Zhenya wasn’t totally clear on the appeal—it seemed cold and inconvenient—but the other guys were excited, even Seryozha, and Zhenya decided he would be excited, too.

They flew to Buffalo on New Year’s Eve and took a bus to the stadium to practice. The weather was overcast but not too cold, and skating outside reminded Zhenya of his childhood, the winters he had spent messing around on the outdoor rink near his apartment. Light snow fell like a dusting of chalk clapped from his hands in the gym. He skated a few slow laps to warm up and felt his spirits lifting. This would be fun.

Sid pulled up beside him. “Race to the crease?”

Zhenya scoffed. Racing was dumb and for kids. “You lose for sure.”

Sid grinned and crouched down, getting into starting position. “We’ll see about that.”

Zhenya won, but not by much. Sid wasn’t the fastest guy on the ice, but his speed wasn’t terrible; but Zhenya’s strides were longer. It wasn’t his fault Sid was so short.

“Come on, rematch,” Sid said, because as soon as he lost the contest became best two out of three, but Zhenya wouldn’t give in, not even when Sid upped the wattage on his already blinding smile. They had a game tomorrow, and he didn’t want to wear himself out catering to Sid’s ego. No matter how cute Sid looked in his knit cap.

Sid’s behavior had completely changed in the past few days, since their conversation after Christmas. They had played two games and had practice in between, and Sid had been orbiting Zhenya in paths of decreasing circumference, armed with a stupid hopeful smile and his implacable Canadian good humor. Sid’s life had taught him that hard work would get him everything he wanted, and now that Zhenya had encouraged him he was forging ahead with the determination that made every goalie in the league quake in his skates. 

Zhenya hadn’t forgotten the kiss, awkward and unexpected as it had been. He knew what Sid was after. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Smug? Enraged?

Maybe more smug than enraged.

Winter Classic or not, it was still New Year’s Eve. After dinner, he and Seryozha went to the hotel bar and had some vodka and toasted to the coming year. 

“A good season for you,” Seryozha said.

“It’s been okay,” Zhenya said. He was playing fine. Not as well as Sid.

Seryozha shook his head. “Zhenka, one day you’ll have to accept that not being the best doesn’t mean you aren’t extraordinarily good.”

Zhenya didn’t know how to respond to that. He downed his shot.

It was still early when Seryozha begged off to call Natasha before bedtime. Zhenya stayed at the bar alone and had another drink and thought about the past year. Last New Year’s Eve was before everything: before Sasha, before Jeremy and Fedya—before Sid. Back then, Zhenya hadn’t even been able to admit to himself what he desired. For all of his missteps, he couldn’t be sorry about where he’d ended up.

What would he do in the next year? Where would he find himself a year from now? 

He paid his tab and left the bar to pace aimlessly around the lobby. He wasn’t drunk, but he’d had enough vodka to feel warm and relaxed. He sat down in an armchair beside a real plant that looked fake and texted Sid: **what u room #**

He waited, his knee jiggling anxiously. He didn’t know what he was doing. He shouldn’t have sent that message. He could go upstairs and watch a movie with Talbo and ignore Sid’s reply, if he sent one. 

He stroked one of the plant’s fronds. Was it a fern? A palm? It felt real, glossy and cool to the touch.

His phone vibrated. **512**

Zhenya went back into the bar and bought another shot of vodka. Sid was captain now: he had his own room. If Zhenya went up there, he knew what would happen. They wouldn’t watch a movie. At most they might put one on in the background. 

Was he letting Sid get his way? Maybe this was Zhenya’s revenge: to take what he wanted from Sid’s body. If Sid liked it, that was incidental.

He could justify anything to himself. The truth was that he wanted it.

He went upstairs. Sid answered the door on the first knock, like he had been waiting. His T-shirt was inside-out, like he had hastily dressed, or had taken off his shirt when Zhenya texted and then changed his mind. He met Zhenya’s gaze and turned pink and said, “Geno, uh—”

Zhenya didn’t want to talk. The TV was on, so there was the movie, just as he had pictured. He nudged Sid out of the way and shut the door behind him. His heart was pounding, which made no sense, because he knew Sid wanted him, or at least wanted a dick, and Zhenya was an acceptable option. He wasn’t going to get shot down. He probably wasn’t.

He took off his shoes and climbed on Sid’s bed, right where he could tell Sid had been sitting from how the pillows were piled up and dented from Sid’s body, and how the covers were turned down and the mattress was still warm. A water bottle and the TV remote were discarded in the sheets along with Sid’s phone.

Sid looked like a frightened cat, frozen in the doorway with his hair all ruffled. A sudden spatter of gunfire from the TV was the only noise in the room. Zhenya didn’t recognize whatever it was Sid was watching. Some action film. 

“Come here,” Zhenya said. He leaned back against the headboard and stretched out his legs. He should have gone back to his room and changed into sweatpants, but then Talbo would have wanted to know where he was going, and there was no safe explanation. He and Sid went to dinner sometimes, but otherwise they didn’t hang out much just the two of them.

“Should I,” Sid said, and stopped. “Do you wanna…?”

Wordlessly, Zhenya patted his thigh.

Sid’s pink flush edged into crimson. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, and then he scowled and crossed the room, and climbed on the bed to sit on Zhenya’s lap.

Zhenya was trying to play it cool, but he was so nervous he was certain Sid would be able to hear the anxious beating of his heart. But Sid seemed equally nervous. His put his hands on Zhenya’s elbows, and then on his own thighs, and finally rested them lightly on Zhenya’s shoulders. He kept his ass politely seated near Zhenya’s knees, avoiding any dick-to-dick contact. And his eyes darted across Zhenya’s face and torso, looking everywhere but Zhenya’s eyes.

Zhenya cautiously tucked his fingertips underneath the legs of Sid’s basketball shorts. “Okay?”

Sid was even redder than before. “Is this, uh. This is what you wanted me to do, right?” 

“Yes,” Zhenya said. He slid his hands up Sid’s thighs, beneath his loose shorts, feeling the soft hair and warm skin, the strong muscles of Sid’s legs flexing under Zhenya’s palms. He had been thinking about Sid for a year, and it was more or less exactly how he had imagined, only Sid’s breathing was louder and he smelled better, and he was warmer. Zhenya said, “You think about. Tell me.”

“I thought about—you mean doing this?” Sid asked, and when Zhenya nodded, he made a face and said, “Do we have to talk about it?”

“Yes,” Zhenya said. He was still mad, and he thought he deserved to hear Sid’s fantasies. “Tell me. Or I leave.”

Sid shifted on his lap, and for a moment Zhenya thought he would refuse, and that would be it: Zhenya had given an ultimatum and couldn’t back down, and he would go back to his hotel room alone and unsatisfied. But then Sid drew a breath and said, “I thought about. Kissing you, I. Your mouth is always open, and it looks. And I guess I thought a lot about what you did with that guy, you know, and whether _I_ could do those things. I mean. Maybe I wouldn’t like it.” He glanced down and licked his lips. “Kissing you was okay.”

“Oh, _okay_ ,” Zhenya said. His fingertips reached the crease of Sid’s hips. Sid didn’t appear to be wearing underwear. Zhenya was going to die.

“Whatever, it wasn’t like it was much of a kiss,” Sid said. “You just sat there. You didn’t even kiss me back. How am I supposed to know?”

“Okay, kiss me,” Zhenya said. He tilted his head back to bring his mouth closer to Sid’s, and waited.

Sid licked his lips again and shifted a little closer. His gaze dropped to Zhenya’s mouth and stayed there. He shifted one hand to the back of Zhenya’s neck to tangle in his hair. Zhenya was overdue for a haircut, and he was glad for it now as Sid tugged gently before he lowered his head and touched his lips to Zhenya’s.

Sid drew back and looked at him. Zhenya waited. After a moment, Sid angled his head slightly and kissed Zhenya again, sweetly, his lips parted. That was more like it. Zhenya kept his mouth soft and let Sid do what he liked, kissing Zhenya carefully and pausing after each kiss like he was trying to decide how he felt about it.

Zhenya’s nervousness eased as Sid didn’t pull away or tell him to leave. Sid was getting more into it, kissing him more deeply, and at the first cautious touch of Sid’s tongue to his upper lip, Zhenya shoved his hands all the way up Sid’s shorts and grabbed his hips and dragged him closer.

“Oh,” Sid said against Zhenya’s mouth. He went up on his knees and then settled himself again, his knees spread a little wider, his pelvis tucked right against Zhenya’s, cradled together. He let go of Zhenya’s hair and instead hooked his arm around Zhenya’s neck, holding him close. When he kissed Zhenya again, his mouth was open.

Zhenya hadn’t extensively made out with someone in a long time, maybe not since the earliest days with Kristya. Sid was warm and his thighs were so big and Zhenya got to grope them to his heart’s content, squeezing at the top where the muscle was soft and relaxed. He was a good kisser, which Zhenya found a little surprising; he had never known Sid to hook up, and if he’d had a girlfriend during Zhenya’s time with the team, he had kept it very quiet. But he seemed to know exactly what he was doing, kissing Zhenya slow and deep and focused—maybe with less tongue than Zhenya would have preferred, but that was just a matter of opinion. 

Sid was warm and his thighs were big and he started moving a little in Zhenya’s lap, kind of rocking back and forth, and Zhenya was so distracted by the sweet drag of Sid’s mouth against his that it took him a while to realize Sid was hard.

Well, that answered that question.

Sid broke away to suck wet kisses along Zhenya’s neck. Zhenya tilted his head back to give Sid more room and stopped trying to fight his own erection. He didn’t know how far they would get this evening, but as long as Sid was into it, he was going to enjoy himself.

He slid his hands out of Sid’s shorts and instead reached back to cup Sid’s ass. He had been thinking about it for so long: how it would feel, what Sid might let him do to it. Sid made a soft noise and pressed against him more urgently, his mouth at Zhenya’s ear, making him shiver with want.

“Sid,” Zhenya said. He tucked his fingertips inside Sid’s waistband. “What you like?”

Sid exhaled, warm against Zhenya’s ear. He sat back and ran a hand through his hair, messing it up even further, dark and curling at the front. “I don’t know. I haven’t, uh.” He plucked at the collar of Zhenya’s T-shirt. “Will you take this off?”

Zhenya would happily remove any article of clothing Sid asked him to. He struggled out of his shirt, listening to Sid laugh as he twisted and knocked his elbows against the headboard. It wasn’t easy to undress with Sid in his lap, his hands on Zhenya’s shoulders and then on his ribs as Zhenya pulled the shirt over his head.

“Don’t laugh,” Zhenya said, and tossed his shirt on the floor.

“I’m not laughing _at_ you.” Sid ran his hands over Zhenya’s shoulders, his lips parting, his gaze trailing over Zhenya’s chest and stomach, which Zhenya sucked in a little. “You look, um.”

Zhenya grinned, pleased by the look on Sid’s face, his flushed cheeks and heavy eyelids. “Yes?”

“Shut up,” Sid said, and he met Zhenya’s eyes then, grinning himself. “You suck. You’re so smug.”

Zhenya didn’t know that word, but it was probably something about how good-looking he was. He was ready to forgive Sid for anything. There was no disgust in Sid’s gaze now, only proprietary appreciation as his hands slid down Zhenya’s arms.

“Sid,” he said, and Sid kissed him again, which was great, but not what Zhenya wanted. He pulled away and tugged at Sid’s waistband. “Let me see.”

Sid stared at him for a moment, and then he nodded and braced his hands on Zhenya’s shoulders and leaned back slightly, giving Zhenya room.

Zhenya flushed hot as he realized Sid wanted _him_ to do it. He was pleased that his hands didn’t shake at all as he carefully pulled down the waistband of Sid’s shorts to bare Sid’s cock.

He was bigger than Zhenya would have expected from his locker room glimpses, long and thick, and uncut, which Zhenya had known, but which made his mouth water now thinking about sliding his tongue beneath the foreskin. Zhenya ran his thumb lightly along the underside and watched Sid’s eyelids flutter. Sid looked so good like this, pink and dazed, warm in Zhenya’s lap and letting Zhenya touch him, and rubbing his palms against Zhenya’s ribs. Zhenya wanted to strip him bare and touch him everywhere, every part that he’d seen without watching, Sid’s pink nipples and his soft paper-white belly, his hairy calves, his hairless torso, the layer of fat around his navel. But mostly his big dick.

“You, too,” Sid said. He was looking down at Zhenya’s fingertips on the shaft of his dick, and when he glanced up through his eyelashes, Zhenya felt stripped already. “I want to see you.”

Zhenya’s mouth was too dry for words. “Okay,” he managed.

He got off the bed to take off his pants. Sid lay on his back to wriggle out of his own clothes, and Zhenya paused with his jeans unbuttoned to watch the slow reveal of Sid’s dark pubes and dark underarm hair. Zhenya didn’t feel confident or experienced at all; he was just as awkward and uncertain as he had been the first time with Kristya, and just as eager, too. He really wanted Sid to like it so he would let Zhenya do it again.

“Come on,” Sid said, naked, propped up on his elbows to watch, and Zhenya ruthlessly shoved down his embarrassment and pushed his jeans and briefs over his hips in one swift motion.

Sid was pink clear down to his nipples. “You like?” Zhenya said challengingly.

Sid sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and chewed on it for a moment. He was definitely looking at Zhenya’s dick. “Maybe you could come here and let me find out.”

 _God_. Zhenya tripped over his own feet in his haste to get out of his pants.

Getting back in bed was a little awkward. Zhenya didn’t know if he should just go for it and lie down on top of Sid rub their bodies together, or if he should ease into it more, stay on his own side of the bed and let Sid initiate. Probably that. But Sid sat up and pushed the blankets aside and reached for him as soon as Zhenya set one tentative knee on the mattress, and Zhenya went gladly down into Sid’s arms.

They kissed some more, lying on their sides, touching each other’s arms and shoulders. Zhenya increasingly felt that he had lost control of the situation. He had pictured himself being coldly furious and commanding, telling Sid that if he wanted it so bad, he could go ahead and suck Zhenya’s dick, feel free. But instead Sid was being so sweetly exploratory, and of course Zhenya wanted nothing more than for Sid to truly like him and care about him as more than a safe body to experiment with.

At last Sid pushed Zhenya over onto his back and gazed down at him. He slid his hand along Zhenya’s body from his shoulder to his hip, warm and a little damp. Zhenya liked to think he was a man, but really he was a scared boy, half in love with Sid who had hurt him so badly. He wasn’t cold or commanding. He wasn’t ready for this.

He swallowed. “Sid, maybe we don’t have sex tonight.”

Some of the tension leached out of Sid’s posture. “Oh, uh. If you don’t want to—”

“I do,” Zhenya said. He caught Sid’s hand and brought it to his chest, over his heart. “But maybe wait.”

“Okay.” Sid blew out a breath. “It’s weird, eh? Doing this with a teammate.”

That wasn’t the issue, but Zhenya didn’t have the words or the desire to discuss it. “You too nervous,” he said, because teasing Sid was safe and familiar. “Get scare.”

“I’m not scared,” Sid said, frowning. Then he exhaled again and rubbed his face. “I _am_ kind of nervous, though, I guess.”

Zhenya didn’t want to have any of these tender feelings. Sid’s worries weren’t his problem. He raised his eyebrows and said nothing. 

“So, uh,” Sid said. He spread his hand wide on Zhenya’s sternum. Zhenya’s heart was pounding again, and he wondered if Sid could feel it. “Can I still touch you?”

Zhenya flushed and hoped Sid wouldn’t notice. “You want—”

“Not for sex,” Sid said. “Just.” He went down on one elbow, hesitated for a moment, and then leaned in to kiss Zhenya’s mouth, so gently. “Can I?”

Zhenya folded his arms beneath his head, warmly pleased as Sid’s cheeks pinked in response. “Where?”

“Well, I dunno,” Sid said. A smile tugged at his mouth. He moved his hand to thumb across one of Zhenya’s nipples. “Maybe here?”

“Okay, maybe,” Zhenya said, trying not to arch into the touch.

Sid touched him everywhere. He licked Zhenya’s nipples and tugged curiously at the hair in his armpits. His fingertips drew lines between the moles on Zhenya’s belly, making Zhenya flinch and shiver. He wormed his way down the bed and spent a long time with his head pillowed on Zhenya’s thigh, tracing the bony projections of his pelvis and the tender creases of his groin, so close to Zhenya’s dick that he had to bite his tongue from begging Sid to touch him there. The head of his dick leaked a sticky puddle onto his abdomen, and finally Sid wiped it up with his thumb and brought it to his mouth to taste.

Zhenya groaned, watching the pink flash of Sid’s tongue, the considering look on his face. “Okay?”

“Doesn’t taste like much,” Sid reported. “Just kind of salty.” He pushed up onto his elbow again and prodded at Zhenya’s balls. Zhenya would have done some landscaping if he’d planned this in advance, but maybe it was good for Sid to get the full unvarnished experience of Zhenya’s ungroomed pubic hair. 

“It’s not toy,” Zhenya said, reaching down to stop Sid as his poking became too aggressive. “Sid—”

“Sorry,” Sid said. He licked his lips. His fingers teased at the base of Zhenya’s dick and slid along the shaft. Zhenya breathed carefully through his mouth and tried not to react. He thought Sid was only so comfortable exploring because Zhenya had taken sex off the table, and he didn’t want to spoil that. He would have given a lot for his first time with a guy to be like this, safe behind a locked door with someone he trusted. 

Sid’s thumb rolled over the bare head of Zhenya’s dick and dragged downward to trace the line of his foreskin. He licked his lips again. “Where are we, um. You said no sex, but. Can I—?”

If Sid wasn’t going to finish any of his sentences, he couldn’t expect Zhenya to understand what he meant. But he had a pretty good idea from the way Sid was running his hand along Zhenya’s shaft and chewing on his lip. Zhenya said, “A little bit. If you want.” Calm, relaxed. He was experienced; he was being generous to Sid. Nothing was a big deal.

He stared at the ceiling as Sid curled his hand around Zhenya’s dick and lifted it from his belly. “Jeez,” Sid muttered. Zhenya felt the bed shift, and he held his breath. Then Sid’s soft, wet tongue was lapping at his slit.

Zhenya gripped the bedclothes so he wouldn’t grab at Sid’s head. Sid licked a few times and then—oh, God—opened his mouth to suck on the head, so gently and sweetly.

“Sid,” Zhenya choked out. This was more than he had expected. He had thought Sid wanted to touch him a little, not use his _mouth_. Were they having sex? Did this count as sex? Oh, God, he wanted Sid to keep going, he had been jerking off thinking about Sid’s mouth for months now, but. What would happen to him, if he let Sid make him come? He would return the favor, and Sid would either be happy and cuddly or would kick Zhenya out of his room immediately, and either outcome would only make Zhenya feel worse. He had texted Sid on impulse, but coming up here at all had probably been a mistake. When would he learn to think things through?

Probably never, at this rate.

He slid his hand into Sid’s (unbearably soft) hair and pulled. Sid sat up, blinking, flushed, bright-eyed, his mouth wet and red, and maybe Zhenya had learned something after all, because he didn’t immediately tug Sid back down onto his dick.

“Sorry,” Sid said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I just. Uh, sorry.”

“You like,” Zhenya said, hoping his tone was sly and knowing. “Like my dick.”

“I guess I do,” Sid said. He crossed his legs beneath him and looked down at his hands. “Yeah. I guess so.”

Zhenya couldn’t bear the hunched defeat of his shoulders. He sat up, too, and cupped the back of Sid’s neck with one hand. “It’s okay you like,” he said, the hard-fought wisdom he had earned over the past year. “It’s not bad.”

Sid watched him for a moment, his mouth pursed. “You don’t think so?”

“I like, too,” Zhenya said. He leaned in and kissed Sid until Sid softened and kissed him back. “It’s okay you like.”

“Okay,” Sid said. He let Zhenya kiss him a few more times. Then he pulled back and grinned, brittle but real. “Will you at least let me jerk off?”

He was out of his mind. There was no way Zhenya would survive lying there and watching Sid make himself come. “No,” he said shortly. “I leave, then you do.”

“Don’t leave,” Sid said. He lay down in the rumpled sheets and tugged at Zhenya’s hand. “I was joking. You can stay for a while. The movie’s almost over.”

Zhenya considered him, stretched out naked and inviting, still mostly hard. If he were smarter, he would go back to his own room and pretend the whole incident had been a fever dream. 

He wasn’t smart. He was only a hockey player.

“Okay,” he said.

They watched the rest of the movie together, Sid curled against Zhenya’s side, his erection going soft against Zhenya’s hip. Zhenya hadn’t been this close to anyone since the summer, when he’d spent the night with a woman in Magnitogorsk, largely to prove to himself that he still liked it. Holding Sid against him and shaking with Sid’s laughter at whatever was happening on the TV, Zhenya felt his emotions knot in his gut like skate laces left to tangle at the bottom of a bag. He had told himself he was going to use Sid for sex, and instead there had been no sex, and he was playing with the soft hair at the back of Sid’s neck and watching what was apparently not an action movie at all but instead some kind of buddy cop comedy. He didn’t know what he was feeling. Everything. Every single thing that it was possible for a person to feel.

\+ + +

The day of the Winter Classic started off gloomy and cold, and by game time it was snowing. Zhenya thought that the low flat sky was forming a dome for them, but he regretted his fanciful thinking as the game went on and the snow fell harder. By the third period, they were all skating through drifts on the ice.

Sid won the game for them in the shootout. Everyone was in a good mood in the locker room, and Zhenya, who had no excuse for his own bad mood that he wanted to share with anyone, faked it. He posed for pictures with Seryozha and with Talbo and Staalsy and smiled and didn’t look at Sid, gleefully naked and talking with Army. By the time he finally went to shower, his fake good mood had become real. What was his reason for being so sour? He was in the NHL, playing hockey with Sidney Crosby and also kissing him. He remembered being fifteen, full of feelings he couldn’t name or understand. That boy would have done anything to be where Zhenya was now.

After a win, Sid made an effort to talk to every guy on the team, even if it was only to say a few words. Zhenya’s turn didn’t come until they were straggling out to the bus to head to the airport. Sid said something to Staalsy and dropped back to walk with Zhenya and Seryozha. “Good game, eh?”

“A little too much snow toward the end,” Seryozha said, smiling, “but it was nice to play outdoors.”

“For sure,” Sid said. “I played a lot of pond hockey growing up. Good memories.” He glanced at Zhenya. His smile widened.

Zhenya, unaccountably flustered, hitched his bag higher on his shoulder and said nothing. “Can we do this again?” Sid had asked him, when Zhenya went back to his own room last night, and Zhenya had no backbone and maybe never would. He had said yes.

It was such a bad idea. He knew why Sid wanted him, and it had nothing to do with Zhenya’s specific merits. Whereas Zhenya had wanted Sid since he was fifteen.

“Well,” Sid said. His smile dimmed a little. “See you guys at practice tomorrow.”

When he was gone, Seryozha said, “The two of you have made up, then?”

“I guess so,” Zhenya said. “I’m still kind of mad. But it’s his team, you know? I have to get over it.” All of that was true, just incomplete.

“Ah, Zhenya,” Seryozha said, but he let it go.

Zhenya knew he was going to do whatever Sid wanted, for as long as he wanted it, but the logistics were complicated. He couldn’t have Sid over, because he’d never had anyone from the team over and Seryozha and Ksusha would both be delighted and ask far too many questions. Maybe he could go to Sid’s, but he didn’t know how Sid felt about that, and the thought of having sex in Mario Lemieux’s house was enough to kill all of Zhenya’s boners forever. Away games were probably their best bet, because Sid loved company and always had someone in his hotel room, and nobody would think anything of it. Except maybe Seryozha. Well, Zhenya could be sneaky.

But their next road trip wasn’t for another five days: a miserable eternity. Zhenya was extra lazy in the weight room after practice the day after they got back from Buffalo, lingering in the power cage doing some extremely half-hearted squats and hoping Sid would come talk to him. Sid was doing something on the mats with Army, some combination of stretching and ab work, and he glanced in Zhenya’s direction so often that Zhenya knew he simply had to wait it out.

Army left at last, after a conversation that involved a lot of shrugging and head-shaking on Sid’s part, and then they were alone. Zhenya put his head down and pretended he was working hard, but he watched from the corner of his eye as Sid approached, the T-shirt he’d changed into after practice wet all down the front from sweat.

“Hey,” Sid said.

Zhenya wobbled his way up out of a squat and re-racked the bar. He didn’t want to seem too eager. Calm, relaxed. Sid was wearing his stretchy pants that didn’t hide anything. “Hi.”

“Squats look good,” Sid said, and flashed a grin that was more of a smirk. 

“ _Sid_ ,” Zhenya said, faux-shocked to cover up his genuine surprise that Sid would so freely admit to staring at Zhenya’s ass. 

Sid shrugged. He moved his hands like he wanted to stick them in his pockets, but he didn’t have any pockets, and anyway his pants could barely contain the joined forces of his ass and his dick; there was no room for his hands. “Listen, uh.” His face flushed red, and Zhenya waited, fascinated, for whatever he was going to say next. “I keep thinking about sucking your dick. So. I’m not sure—”

“Miami,” Zhenya said. He glanced at the open weight room door. He wanted to stick his hand down Sid’s pants and get a good feel, or stick his fingers in Sid’s mouth and let him think about what it would be like for Zhenya to slide his cock as deep as Sid could take him. But it would be stupid to get caught like that, now that he had finally found a safe outlet. 

“Okay,” Sid said. “The first night? After dinner.”

“Okay,” Zhenya said.

“Okay,” Sid said. “You’ll let me this time?”

“Maybe,” Zhenya said, to watch Sid’s face fall and revel in how disappointed he was, and then, touching Sid’s shoulder, just for a moment, because he couldn’t help himself, “Okay, yes.”

\+ + +

In Miami, Zhenya told Talbo he was staying in and ordering room service for dinner, which he did, and when he was done eating he went down the hall to Sid’s room. Sid had texted him the number after they checked in, and Zhenya had looked at it over and over and counted down each minute until 7:00, when Sid had said it was okay to come by.

“Hi,” Sid said when he opened the door, face flushed and eyes bright, smiling like he expected to get everything he wanted. And he probably would, because Zhenya was a sucker.

“Hi, Sid,” Zhenya said.

Sid kissed him up against the door, playing with the tie of Zhenya’s sweatpants. His mouth was so soft and his ass, when Zhenya got his hands on it, was so round and perfect for squeezing. He was in basketball shorts again, and Zhenya tentatively slid his hands beneath the waistband and got a double palmful of Sid’s warm bare flesh. Sid pushed into his touch and started kissing Zhenya’s neck, the way he had before, laying wet hungry kisses along the underside of Zhenya’s jaw.

“This is always kind of weird,” Sid said, mouthing another kiss against Zhenya’s pulse. “Like, how do you get from the kissing part to the naked part?” He dropped his voice. “Hey baby, let’s get in bed.”

Zhenya rolled his eyes. He leaned down to press his mouth to Sid’s ear. “Sid,” he whispered, letting his lips brush the rim of cartilage. “Let’s go in bed.”

He heard Sid swallow. “Okay, yeah. That works.”

Sid stripped down like he was in the change room, efficient and unselfconscious. Instead of undressing himself, Zhenya stared the way he couldn’t at the rink. He wanted to taste Sid’s nipples and suck a hickey into the soft pale skin of the underside of his arm. He wanted to watch Sid’s mouth part around his dick. He wanted Sid to fuck him; he had for months, and he wanted it even more now that he’d seen Sid hard, big and pink. But was afraid to ask for that, in case Sid thought it was weird that he liked it.

Sid flopped down on the bed and propped himself up on his elbows. He was hard already, his dick lying fat on his belly. Zhenya wanted to suck him, and he probably could; he knew Sid didn’t think that was weird. “Come on, take it off,” Sid said, grinning.

“What,” Zhenya said. He put his hands on his waistband. “This?”

“Everything,” Sid said, “come on. You said you’d let me.”

Zhenya had, and he knew he would let Sid do whatever he wanted. Sid waited for Zhenya to take off his clothes, and then pulled him down onto the bed and bossily nudged him around until Zhenya was arranged to his liking. He was pushy about it, which Zhenya liked so much and was still embarrassed about, how much he wanted someone to hold him down and just— And Sid seemed like he might want to do it.

“There,” Sid said, with satisfaction, when Zhenya was on his back in the pillows with his knees bent and spread wide. Sid could see everything, probably, and Zhenya felt exposed and turned on. He couldn’t stop staring at Sid’s mouth, the swell of his lower lip, as pink as his nipples. 

He reached down to rub below the head of his dick, where he was most sensitive. “You want?”

“Um,” Sid said. His hands slid up the insides of Zhenya’s thighs. “You said you like doing this, right?”

“Yes,” Zhenya said. He remembered how he had felt with Fedya’s cock in his mouth, shaky and thrilled.

“Okay,” Sid said. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Could we just. Kiss for a while? Is that okay?”

Zhenya didn’t find Sid’s nervousness endearing at all. “It’s okay,” he said.

He was doing this as a favor to Sid. He was experienced and magnanimous. He didn’t enjoy the weight of Sid’s body on top of him, bearing him down into the mattress. He was indifferent to the way Sid rubbed against him as they kissed. He didn’t love Sid’s soft mouth or his big sturdy body or the quiet noises he made, like he couldn’t help himself. 

“Can I?” Sid asked at last, and Zhenya could only clutch at his shoulders and say, “Please, please.”

Sid kissed his way down Zhenya’s body, like he had seen it in a movie and thought it was sexy. He was unbearably, painfully dorky and Zhenya was so into him. This was going to end so badly, and Zhenya couldn’t stop himself and wasn’t even going to try.

Sid gave him an inexpert but extremely enthusiastic blowjob, hunched there between Zhenya’s legs. He was cautious at first, stroking Zhenya with his hand and licking at the tip, but soon enough he figured out how to move his hand and how to bob his head so he didn’t go too deep and choke. The basic mechanics weren’t complicated; anyone who’d had his dick sucked or watched some porn knew what to do. Zhenya didn’t care at all that Sid couldn’t take him very deep, not when Sid was so hungry about it, sucking urgently with his eyes closed, concentrating. 

Zhenya had to close his own eyes after a while. Watching Sid slide his perfect sweet mouth onto Zhenya’s dick was too much to handle. He worked his hands into Sid’s hair and rubbed his fingertips against Sid’s scalp. He would be nice to Sid and come as quickly as he could, so that Sid’s jaw wouldn’t get tired.

It didn’t take him long. He felt his orgasm building, the tightness and pressure, and he tugged carefully at Sid’s hair and said, “Sid, I’m—”

Sid pulled off to mouth at the base of his dick. “Will you come in my mouth? I want to try it.”

Oh, God in heaven. “Sid,” Zhenya choked out, his hands clenching in Sid’s hair, and he couldn’t hold back his moan as Sid went down on him again.

Sid swallowed all of it, much more gracefully than Zhenya would have managed. He pulled off and coughed a couple of times and wiped at his mouth and grinned. His lips were so red. 

“How’d I do?” he asked. He sat up on his knees, and Zhenya could see how hard he was, shiny-wet at the tip.

“Okay,” Zhenya said. He had forgotten every other word he knew in English.

“You’re an asshole,” Sid said, grinning wider.

“Sid,” Zhenya said. He stroked his thumb over Sid’s lower lip. He desperately wanted to suck Sid off. But Sid now had as much practical experience as Zhenya did, and he didn’t want Sid to realize how clueless Zhenya still was. He forced himself to ask. “What you want?”

“Oh, you’re gonna—?” Sid said, like he really thought Zhenya was going to leave him to deal with his erection on his own. He bent to kiss Zhenya’s hip, heartbreakingly tender. “Could we do it like last time?”

Zhenya wasn’t sure what he meant, but he followed Sid’s directions and prodding and sat up against the headboard, and then Sid climbed into his lap and wrapped his arms around Zhenya’s neck. He was blushing harder than he had been while he was sucking Zhenya’s dick.

“Like this?” Zhenya said, watching Sid’s face as he curled his hand around Sid’s cock. At this angle it would be almost like jerking himself off. Only nothing like that at all.

“Yeah,” Sid said, and then, all in a rush, “I kept thinking about it.”

Zhenya ducked his head to mouth at Sid’s collarbone, trying to hide whatever his face was doing at the thought of Sid fantasizing about this fairly tame thing. Maybe he had touched himself thinking about it. Zhenya’s dark angry misshapen lump of a heart throbbed a few times in his chest. He wanted Sid to think about him all the time.

“Sid,” he murmured, and let himself kiss Sid’s ear and neck and hold him close and breathe in the smell of his skin, a little bit soapy and a little bit sweaty. Sid rocked in his lap, pushing his cock into Zhenya’s hand, and came with a single cry. 

Sid melted into him afterwards. It was the only way Zhenya could think of to describe it. He went soft and limp in Zhenya’s lap, three times heavier than he had been before, weighty and awkward as a sandbag or a sack of potatoes. 

Zhenya wiped his hand on the sheets and settled more comfortably against the pillows. He didn’t have anywhere he needed to be.

After a few minutes, Sid stirred and sat up, removing his face from the crook of Zhenya’s neck. He smiled at Zhenya and ran his fingers through Zhenya’s hair. “Hey.”

Zhenya’s heart was doing something awful. “Hi,” he said.

“Can we do this again in Tampa?” Sid asked.

Why the hell not? Maybe he could get Sid to fuck him, if he worked up the courage to ask for it. What could go wrong? They could get caught, but they wouldn’t get caught; they would be careful. Zhenya could get his feelings hurt. Well, so what? He’d survived worse than a stupid crush on Sidney Crosby.

“Okay,” he said.

“Maybe we could do it at home, too,” Sid said. He was watching his fingers play with Zhenya’s hair instead of looking at Zhenya’s face. “Once we’re back.”

Zhenya’s fantasy about Sid with him on the couch in the basement bloomed into the forefront of his mind. Oh, he wanted it, but he could so easily picture Seryozha’s face, the skeptical lift of his eyebrows. He pulled Sid against him once more, hiding his own face in Sid’s hair. “I tell Gonch you see me. In New York. And how you don’t talk. So if you come over, maybe he think—I don’t know. Like, why you’re come over?”

“Hold on,” Sid said. He sat up again, breaking Zhenya’s grip. “Gonch knows about you?”

What a polite way to phrase it. “Yes, I tell him. And Ksenia.” Okay, he hadn’t personally told Ksenia, but she knew, and that was the important part.

“Oh,” Sid said. He sat there for a few moments. Zhenya watched his gears turning. “And they’re okay with it?”

“It’s good,” Zhenya said. “Glad I tell.” There were a lot of things he wanted to tell Sid, about how scared he had been and how weird it still was in some ways, how they didn’t really discuss it, but how much it meant to Zhenya simply that they knew and still loved him. But English was a wall he hadn’t learned to climb over, barring him from spilling his guts to Sid. Maybe it was a good thing he didn’t know how to talk.

Sid grimaced. “And you told him that I, uh.”

“Yes,” Zhenya said. “You,” and he made the most disgusted face he could manage.

Sid scoffed and leaned backward, balancing with his hands on Zhenya’s shoulders. “Come on. I wasn’t that bad.”

Zhenya made a different, equally disgusted face.

“Whatever,” Sid said. He glanced aside and grimaced again. “Look, why don’t I talk to Gonch? I’ll tell him I was a jerk to you and I feel bad about it, and ask him if he thinks you’d like to hang out. So then if I come over, he won’t think anything of it.”

“Maybe I come to your house,” Zhenya said. He knew some of the guys hung out at Sid’s sometimes. Zhenya had never been tendered an invitation. 

“Someone’s always home,” Sid said, as if someone wasn’t usually home at Zhenya’s.

“Maybe Gonch say no,” Zhenya said. “Say I don’t want hang out.”

Sid gave him a startled look. “Do you think he would? Does he—” His expression shifted into something smaller and guiltier. “You were really upset, huh.”

Zhenya would never forget the look on Sid’s face when he saw Zhenya coming out of that bathroom. And now here Sid was, sucking Zhenya’s dick. There was no excuse for it that he could think of.

“You ask Gonch, it’s fine,” Zhenya said. He didn’t want to talk about his feelings, now or ever, and definitely not with Sid. 

Sid’s expression shrank even further, like a black hole collapsing on itself. “If you don’t want me to—”

“It’s fine,” Zhenya said again. “You ask.”

“Okay,” Sid said. He studied Zhenya’s face, which made Zhenya intensely nervous, because he didn’t know what Sid was looking for. “Do you still, uh.”

“Tampa,” Zhenya said.

“Yeah, okay,” Sid said. His smile was back, touching the corners of his mouth and his eyes. “Tampa.”

\+ + +

In Tampa, Zhenya burrowed beneath the covers and sucked Sid’s dick, hot with embarrassment and also the heat of Sid’s body and the blankets. But he was safe there, because Sid couldn’t see him fumbling around. That hidden warm dark sweaty space beneath the blankets smelled overwhelmingly of Sid’s body, and Zhenya gagged a few times in his eagerness and had worked himself most of the way to orgasm, humping the mattress, by the time Sid moaned and unexpectedly came.

Zhenya wasn’t ready for it. He sputtered and coughed, and sat up, throwing back the blankets to glare at Sid.

“Sorry,” Sid said, panting. “Sorry, I should’ve warned you.”

“Yes,” Zhenya said. His mouth and chin were coated in Sid’s come. He licked his lips and wiped at his face, and discreetly licked his fingers. The taste was bitter and a little salty. He wasn’t into it.

“Thought I had it under control,” Sid said. He reached up to touch Zhenya’s mouth, his expression rueful. “You’re really good at that.”

“Practice lots,” Zhenya said. 

“Guess so.” Sid licked his lips. “Can I do you now?”

“Yes, okay,” Zhenya said.

In Atlanta, Zhenya was dragged out to dinner by Seryozha—“You can’t order room service all the time, you need to go out with the team”—and then Talbo wanted to watch a movie, and Zhenya couldn’t think of any excuse to leave the room, not when Seryozha had said goodnight to all of them in the lobby and made it very clear he was going to call his wife and go to bed. Zhenya texted Sid: **talbo((**

His phone vibrated a minute later. **Okay :(** , Sid had sent, and Zhenya spent the rest of the evening glowering at the TV and thinking about what he could be doing with Sid right now if only Talbo weren’t so determined to be friendly.

After skate the next day, Sid cornered him in the showers and said, “I talked to Gonch, so. Maybe once we’re back?”

“Okay,” Zhenya said. “Tuesday?” They had practice scheduled for that day, which was always a good excuse for camping out in the basement after dinner and eating carbs. Zhenya wanted Sid on the couch with him, like he had imagined.

“Great,” Sid said. “Tuesday sounds great.” His gaze dropped, and he turned red, like he had only just realized Zhenya was naked and covered in soap suds. That was what he got for never having a conversation in a normal place. He was eternally talking to someone while one or both parties were naked, too caught up in whatever was on his mind to put pants on first. But he wasn’t oblivious to Zhenya’s dick now.

They lost to the Thrashers in the shootout, which always sucked, but Zhenya was trying to be more philosophical about losses instead of letting them send him into a black sulk. Two out of three on a road trip wasn’t bad. 

He sat beside Seryozha on the plane home, as always: Zhenya at the window and Seryozha at the aisle. Seryozha kept trying to persuade him to join the card game at the back of the plane, but Zhenya didn’t know the games they played and was still shy about his English, even though everyone on the team was familiar with his limitations by now.

“Sid wants to come over Tuesday night,” Zhenya said, as they split a pack of cashews. “To watch a movie, I think.”

“That’s fine,” Seryozha said. “He told me he wanted to do something. Ask Ksusha if it’s okay with her, but I can’t imagine it won’t be.”

“Okay,” Zhenya said. As easy as that. “Thanks. I think after dinner.”

“Sure,” Seryozha said. He fished out another cashew and gave Zhenya one of his dreaded searching looks, like ground-penetrating radar turned directly onto Zhenya’s coordinates. “I think he’s very sorry, you know.”

“I guess,” Zhenya said. Discussing Sid with Seryozha wasn’t safe in any form. He wished now that he hadn’t said anything about Sid’s rejection, because now Seryozha was invested in the outcome and wanted to check in on how Zhenya was feeling, and it was awful. He was going to start thinking about Sid’s mouth again and blushing, and then Seryozha would read his mind immediately.

“Give him a chance, I think,” Seryozha said. “He’s apologized to you, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Zhenya said. Was he doing anything suspicious? He wasn’t squirming in his seat or avoiding eye contact. He was behaving completely normally. Seryozha would never know. He took the cashew packet from Seryozha’s hand.

“He’s still learning,” Seryozha said. “Give him a chance to do better. Only if you want to.”

“I think I do,” Zhenya said. He wanted to stay angry, but he couldn’t manage it. Not when he could imagine what had been going on in Sid’s head. 

“That’s good,” Seryozha said. “I’ve been hoping you’d make better friends with some of your teammates. Natasha is perfect in every way, but she’s not exactly in your age group.”

Zhenya wanted to sink through the floor of the plane and fall through the sky until he made a crater in the earth. _Friends_. He forced a grin and shoved a few more cashews in his mouth. “She has the advantage of speaking Russian, though.”

Seryozha shook his head and went back to his book. Zhenya slid up the window shade and watched the lights of distant cities passing far below.

\+ + +

Sid came over right at Natasha’s bedtime, which of course got her all stirred up. She was shy at the start, holding Zhenya’s hand as he answered the door.

“Come on, you know Sid,” Zhenya said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. She had been to enough games and team events to recognize him. He was even wearing a Penguins T-shirt, because of course he was.

“You play hockey with Zhenya, right?” Natasha said to Sid in English.

Sid smiled at her. “Yeah. We’re on the same team. I’m Sid.” 

“I’m Natalie Sergeyevna,” Natasha said, and solemnly extended her hand.

“It’s great to meet you,” Sid said, shaking her hand with equal seriousness. Zhenya tried not to smile too fatuously. Sid was always kind to children, and he shouldn’t take Sid being kind to Natasha as a sign of anything other than Sid’s natural inclinations. He wasn’t doing it to please Zhenya.

“Do you want to see my room?” Natasha asked.

“Natusya, you’re going to bed!” Ksusha called from the kitchen, where she and Seryozha were still lingering over dessert. “There’s no time for that.”

Natasha pouted up at Zhenya, who shrugged. “You can show him your room some other time, okay? Don’t make me argue with your mother, she’ll put me in time out.” Time out was a new concept for Zhenya, whose childhood punishments had involved a thorough spanking with a wooden spoon or, more frequently, having his skates taken away.

Natasha was packed off to bed in short order. Zhenya took Sid into the kitchen to say hello to Ksusha and Seryozha and get a bowl for the bag of white cheddar popcorn Sid had brought, Zhenya’s favorite North American snack food. The thought of Sid paying attention to his snack preferences gave Zhenya a terrible feeling in his stomach, warm and aching.

“What movie are you going to watch?” Seryozha asked Sid as Zhenya rummaged around in the fridge for some beers. “Don’t let Zhenya talk you into something in Russian. Make him put the subtitles on.”

“You know I’m illiterate, Seryi,” Zhenya said, and Seryozha and Ksusha both laughed.

“What did he say?” Sid asked, and when Zhenya closed the fridge and turned around, Sid had his hands in his pockets, and he was smiling but it looked strained. Good, Zhenya thought; let him be the odd man out for once. Then he felt guilty. That wasn’t fair to Sid, who had always tried so hard to communicate with Zhenya, and had been a stranger in his own strange French Canadian land. Sid knew very well what it was like.

“He said he can’t read,” Seryozha said, and Zhenya grinned and did his best to look cute and charming, which was really all he had going for him.

He took Sid down into the basement and closed the door at the top of the stairs—to muffle the noise from the TV, he told himself. It was a relief to hear the click of the latch and know they were alone. Seryozha and Ksusha wouldn’t interrupt them, and even if they did, there was no danger in it for Zhenya past some mild embarrassment. But he felt protective of Sid, he realized, as he followed Sid down the stairs: he wanted Sid to be safe and secret, for as long as he wanted to be.

Sid put the popcorn on the coffee table and flopped down on the couch. “We can watch a Russian movie if you want. I don’t mind.”

Zhenya didn’t care about the movie at all and didn’t expect they would spend much time watching it. He wasn’t going to have sex with Sid on the couch where he held tea parties with Natasha, but eating popcorn and making out would keep them both occupied.

He turned on the TV and turned off the overhead light, so that the room was lit only by the screen. Sid’s face was softened by the dim glow. His hair curled around his face. Here he was, in Zhenya’s house, with popcorn, and his knees spread wide and his thighs straining his jeans. The entire scenario was far too much like a date for Zhenya’s comfort. He knew that wasn’t Sid’s intention, but Zhenya’s feelings rarely had more than a passing acquaintance with facts.

He sat beside Sid and slung an arm around Sid’s shoulders. With his free hand, he picked up the remote. Casual, relaxed: watching a movie with his buddy. “What we watch?”

“Oh,” Sid said. His body was pressed against Zhenya’s from shoulder to knee, and he was so warm, and Zhenya could smell him, mostly his deodorant but also a hint of underlying sweat. “Well, what’s on?”

Zhenya obediently flipped through the channels until Sid said, “Oh, that’s a good one.” Zhenya recognized it after a moment: that movie about the two high school kids who wanted to get laid. It was a favorite among the team, so much so that even Zhenya had picked up some of the catchphrases from hearing them repeated over and over. 

“Okay,” Zhenya said. He couldn’t follow a movie in English to save his life: everyone talked too fast and used too many words he didn’t know. It didn’t matter to him what movie they watched; they were all equally incomprehensible.

“You should put on the Russian subtitles,” Sid said. “I don’t mind.”

Zhenya rolled his eyes. There _were_ no Russian subtitles, not in the US, not unless he put on a DVD he had bought in Russia. “Gonch is joke. It’s not have.”

“Oh,” Sid said. “Well—”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Zhenya said. Maybe Sid really did think they were going to watch the movie.

They did, at least for a little while, as they ate popcorn from the bowl on Zhenya’s lap and drank their beers. Sid leaned into Zhenya’s side a little more each time he reached for the popcorn, until he was curled against Zhenya with his head on Zhenya’s shoulder and his knee drawn up and resting against Zhenya’s thigh. He laughed along with the movie, and Zhenya laughed, too, not knowing what was funny. Zhenya stroked his thumb along the side of Sid’s neck and felt like he couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs.

He couldn’t help what his heart wanted. Why limit himself to a cautious and narrow life? He would rather be open and feel everything and hurt himself a thousand times than experience only what was safe. No joy existed without an equal and opposite sorrow. He would take all of it: fear, suffering, heartbreak, the shameful memories that tormented him at night, and when he was old he could look back and say that at least he had tried. He had done everything, he had been a human person in this world.

Sid leaned forward to set the popcorn bowl and his empty beer bottle on the coffee table. When he sat back again, he settled even more firmly into Zhenya’s side, turned fully into him. His hand rested on Zhenya’s far hip. He pressed a single kiss to Zhenya’s neck.

“Thanks for popcorn,” Zhenya said.

“Oh. Well,” Sid said. “I see you eating it out of the vending machine all the time.”

That was it for the movie. Zhenya stretched out on the couch and drew Sid down on top of him. Sid’s mouth tasted like beer at first and then just like his mouth, already familiar. He worked a hand underneath Zhenya’s shirt to stroke his belly. He was a little more aggressive this time, biting at Zhenya’s lips and using his tongue more, and Zhenya clung to him and turned into a puddle, warm and turned on and trying not to shamelessly rub himself against Sid like a cat in heat. But it was so good.

“Let’s turn over,” Sid said after a while, and they clumsily repositioned, Sid laughing as the soft couch cushions tried to swallow his elbow. Then Zhenya was on top, and Sid—oh—slid his hands down the back of Zhenya’s sweatpants to grope his ass.

Zhenya pushed up onto his elbows. Sid’s expression was filled with unguarded enjoyment, and Zhenya wanted to hide him away, to protect him, even though nobody else could see him like this, alone as they were in the dark.

He could feel how hard Sid was. That couldn’t be comfortable. He worked a hand between their bodies to unbutton Sid’s jeans and tug down the zipper a little, to give him some breathing room.

“Oh,” Sid said. “Are we gonna—?”

“No,” Zhenya said. They should probably both cool off a little. He lay down on top of Sid again and kissed his neck a few times, and then just lay there, feeling him breathe.

Sid slid his hands up Zhenya’s back, tracing his spine. He stroked the stretch marks on Zhenya’s lower back, rippled and yielding. After a few minutes, he said, “I feel like you’re still mad at me.”

“Why you think?” Zhenya said. Had he not sucked Sid’s dick with adequate enthusiasm?

“I don’t know,” Sid said. “You just seem—I don’t know.”

“You hurt me,” Zhenya said. English forced the confession from him. He couldn’t prevaricate or hide behind sarcasm. He only knew the simplest words, to say the most fundamental things, and that was the truth: Sid had hurt him, and he wasn’t over it yet.

Sid’s hands moved slowly. He didn’t speak. Then he said, “I spent a long time, like. Telling myself I couldn’t possibly like guys. It’s gross and weird, and only gross, weird people want to do that. I didn’t know anyone who was—gay, or whatever. But I know you, and I don’t think you’re gross or weird at all, I think you’re, uh.”

Zhenya waited, his face tucked against Sid’s neck. He wanted to see Sid’s expression, but he was afraid Sid would stop talking if he moved.

“I was really mad at you for risking yourself like that,” Sid said at last. “Anyone could have caught you. And I couldn’t stop thinking about what you had done with that guy. I wanted it to be _me_ , I wanted you to touch _me_ , and I couldn’t—I guess I couldn’t keep lying to myself after that. I had some, uh. A few rough weeks in there.”

“Sid,” Zhenya said into Sid’s skin. He didn’t want to feel any sympathy for Sid, but there it was, a hot shard in his chest, like metal before it had fully melted. He wondered when Sid had first had suspicions about himself. How long he had been careful with his eyes in the locker room, seeing without watching.

“It’s not an excuse,” Sid said. “I know it isn’t. I was awful to you. I don’t expect you to forgive me and everything’s fine. I just want you to know, like. It wasn’t about you. It was just my own stupid hangups. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Zhenya kissed Sid’s neck. He didn’t know what to say.

“I think you’re great,” Sid said. His hands were gentle as they moved along Zhenya’s back. “I think you’re so brave. Coming here like you did. I know it hasn’t been easy.”

“Not brave,” Zhenya said. He squirmed out of Sid’s arms and sat up, hugging his knees to his chest and staring at the TV screen so he wouldn’t have to look at Sid’s face. The characters were on a bus. “I leave my team.”

“It wasn’t right,” Sid said. “The way they handled it. And I’m glad you’re here. I love playing hockey with you. That hat trick last night, I mean. Wow. The team’s really lucky to have you, you know?”

Zhenya swallowed. The movie blurred. He might still be in Magnitogorsk if it weren’t for Sid: if he hadn’t wanted to play with Sid so badly. He had abandoned his entire known world for the chance to be here with Sid, playing for the Penguins together. His dream.

“Will you come back over here?” Sid asked, his voice small but hopeful. Zhenya’s heart directed him in a straight line back into Sid’s arms.

\+ + +

He took Sid upstairs when the movie was finished, and down the hall to his room. The house was dark and silent around them; everyone was asleep. Zhenya didn’t turn on any of the lights. He and Sid undressed and got in bed together and kissed until Zhenya’s mouth felt swollen. Sid was heavy on top of him and his cock was hard against Zhenya’s hip and Zhenya was glad the other bedrooms were on a different floor, because he didn’t think he could keep quiet.

“Geno,” Sid kept saying, grinding against him, “Geno,” the name that was Zhenya’s now. It had grown on him. He liked how the fans said it with such affection, like he belonged to them and the city of Pittsburgh. And how Sid said it.

“Sid, will you,” he said. “Your fingers?” He could be brave, like Sid thought he was, and ask for it in the dark.

Sid stopped moving. Zhenya couldn’t make out his expression. “You mean—”

Zhenya rolled them over and caught Sid’s hand and drew it to the curve of his ass. “Please,” he said.

“Jeez,” Sid whispered. “Yeah, okay. Okay.”

Zhenya had spent that autumn mastering the art of fingering himself. He had real lube now instead of hand lotion, and he knew how to relax and breathe through it. Sid didn’t know what he was doing, but Zhenya made it work, riding Sid’s hand and grinding his dick against Sid’s belly. He could just barely see Sid’s face, his mouth hanging open, soft and vulnerable, and Zhenya hoped he loved it, he hoped Sid was overcome, he wanted Sid to like it better with him than he’d ever liked it with anyone else, he wanted Sid to keep coming back to him and giving him everything and asking for everything and just all of it: everything.

“Geno,” Sid said, “oh my God, _Geno_ ,” until finally Zhenya bent to kiss him quiet.

\+ + +

“Did you have a nice time with Sid?” Ksusha asked him over breakfast.

“Yeah,” Zhenya said, praying he wouldn’t blush. “It was fun.” Sid had left very quietly in the middle of the night, after kissing Zhenya at the front door for long enough that Zhenya had started thinking about taking him back to bed. Zhenya hadn’t gotten enough sleep and would be slow at practice and Therrien would yell at him. He wasn’t sorry.

“Can he come over again?” Natasha asked. “I want to show him my room.”

“That’s up to Zhenya,” Seryozha said, reaching across the table to add more fruit to Natasha’s plate and remove a sausage link that she had stolen from Zhenya. 

“We’ll see,” Zhenya said.

He was of course already scheming about when he could have sex with Sid again. It had been two years since he’d gotten laid on a consistent basis—not since Kristya. He had forgotten how great it was, and how nice to have sex with the same person more than once, to learn what they liked and stop feeling so awkward about it. 

He had promised Seryozha he wouldn’t bring any boys to the house; Sid probably didn’t count, but he still didn’t want Seryozha or Ksusha to figure out what was going on and tease him about it or, worse, be disappointed in him. He spent some time studying the calendar in the kitchen where Ksusha kept track of the family’s activities. The trouble was that Seryozha and Zhenya had essentially the same schedule, and there was no way to know in advance when the house might be empty and he could safely have Sid come over.

He didn’t have a chance to figure it out before their next game. Sid went into the boards during the first and limped off the ice, and he didn’t come back to the bench that period. When he wasn’t in the locker room at intermission, Staalsy said, “Hey, Geno, do you — — — — — with Sid?”

Zhenya looked to Seryozha for help. Seryozha refused to translate for him most of the time, but he made an exception for Staalsy. The guy was hopeless. 

“He’s asking if you want to go check on Sid,” Seryozha said.

“Yes,” Zhenya said to Staalsy.

They shuffled down the hall to the trainers’ room. Sid was on an exam table with his right foot propped up on a rolled towel and a bag of ice tied to his ankle. He looked over as they came in and made a face that was probably supposed to be a smile.

“High ankle sprain,” he said, before either of them could say anything. 

Zhenya knew that term well; Flower and Talbo had both gotten high ankle sprains in December, and Flower was still out of the lineup. Sid would be out for a while.

“Sorry, Sid,” he said, his heart sinking, and Staalsy said, “That sucks, man.”

“Yeah, well.” Sid shrugged. “They’ll look at it again on Monday. Maybe it’s fine.”

Maybe, but Zhenya wasn’t counting on it. The team was subdued on their flight to Montreal after the game. A team wasn’t only one person, but without Sid they weren’t much: a heavily injured and somewhat ragtag collection of idiots. 

**sorry(((** he texted Sid from his hotel room.

Sid didn’t reply until the morning. **Thanks**

Zhenya wasn’t sure how to decipher that and didn’t try. He didn’t hear anything else from Sid or see him for two more days, and that was a good reminder to him, that what they did together was only about sex, no matter how sweet Sid was with him when they were alone. But Sid was at the arena for their next game, hobbling around in his suit, and Zhenya wasn’t surprised when Therrien made the announcement: high ankle sprain, six to eight weeks.

Zhenya usually spent at least half an hour walking laps around the arena before a game, listening to music and doing his visualizations. Today he cut it short and found Sid in the lounge, inexplicably making his usual sandwich, like he thought it might bring the team luck even though he wasn’t playing. He had taken off his suit jacket, and his shirt was tucked so neatly into his trousers that Zhenya thought he might expire from the curve of Sid’s lower back. 

Nobody else was in the room. Zhenya slid onto one of the stools at the counter and said, “Sorry you ankle.”

Sid glanced at him and smiled, a real warm smile with his eyes creasing, that eased every fear Zhenya had nurtured for the past few days and tried not to acknowledge. “Hey, G.” 

“Hard you can’t play,” Zhenya said. He touched his own left shoulder. “I know. My shoulder—I want help team.”

“That’s right,” Sid said. He wiped his jam-covered knife on the clean slice of bread and dropped it in the sink. “You know exactly how it is, eh?”

“Yes,” Zhenya said. He watched Sid putter around at the counter, putting away the jam and peanut butter, adjusting the top slice of bread just so, licking his top lip the way he did when he was talking to reporters or focused very intently on his task. Zhenya said, “I keep team for you. We go in playoffs. I promise.”

Sid glanced at him again. He rotated his sandwich ninety degrees on the plate, for no reason Zhenya could discern. “You can’t promise that.”

Zhenya couldn’t promise anything, but he was going to make it happen anyway. “I can,” he insisted. “I play better. Try hard. Do more for team. Then it’s playoffs, okay?”

“God,” Sid said. He laughed and shook his head. “Just like that, huh? You decide it’s going to happen, and that’s that.”

Zhenya shrugged. Sid didn’t have to believe him. He would find out soon enough.

Sid shook his head again. He took a bite of his sandwich and watched Zhenya as he chewed. “You know, I’m probably gonna get really bored. Too much free time.”

“Yes,” Zhenya said. Rehab was boring: he knew.

“No, I mean.” Sid’s cheeks turned faintly pink. “Like, maybe I could use some company, you know?”

 _Oh_. Zhenya sat up a little straighter. Sid probably wouldn’t be traveling with them on road trips for a while, and Zhenya had thought wistfully—and a little guiltily—of all those wasted opportunities to spend time alone. But maybe Sid had thought about that, too, and found some way around it. Zhenya couldn’t imagine what. A secret room in the arena, a pre-arranged hotel room downtown—

“Maybe you could come over,” Sid said. “To my place.” He was definitely pink now; there was no mistaking it. “I’ve got the whole top floor, so. Probably more privacy than you’ve got at Gonch’s.”

Zhenya’s dick was both intrigued and appalled. “Sid, it’s _Mario_ ,” he said, and made a pained face to fill in what he couldn’t convey with words.

Sid rolled his eyes. “He’s just a person, Geno, come on. You’ve talked to him plenty of times.”

Sure: three or four times, meaningless exchanges of pleasantries. Lemieux would take one look at Zhenya and know that he was corrupting the Penguins’ star player. Maybe Metallurg would take him back if he begged.

“He’s out a lot during the day, anyway,” Sid went on, oblivious to Zhenya’s inner turmoil. “Meetings and whatever. You probably won’t even see him.”

“Okay,” Zhenya said. “When?” He had been tapped for the All Star game as Sid’s replacement and would be suffering through that in Atlanta in a few days, and then they had a two-night road trip immediately after. It might be February before he got to touch Sid again. At least Seryozha would be with him in Atlanta, for company and as shelter from Sasha.

Sid grimaced. He knew the schedule as well as Zhenya did. “When do you get back from Atlanta?”

Zhenya shook his head. “We go Newark from Atlanta. Meet team.”

“After that road trip, then, I guess,” Sid said, and sighed.

“After,” Zhenya said. “We make plan.” More than a week. His dick would miss Sid every day.

“I’ll let you know,” Sid said, and then Staalsy came into the room and said, “Hey, guys, — — — — —?”, and the conversation was over.

\+ + +

Zhenya didn’t hear from Sid at all the whole time he was in Atlanta, or during the subsequent road trip. He thought a few times about texting Sid, but what was there to say? Wish you were here? I’m taking full advantage of the privacy of this hotel room to finger myself and imagine it’s you? He still couldn’t think of last year’s All Star Game without crumbling internally with mortification, and it was sheer hell to be on a team with Sasha and know that he was remembering the same things Zhenya was. He could have used a reassuring text message or two from Sid.

But none arrived. Maybe Sid had changed his mind. Or, more likely, he simply didn’t see any reason to text Zhenya. They were having sex, but that was as far as it went. They weren’t on casual texting terms. If Zhenya had hopes, that was his own problem to deal with. Sid had done nothing to encourage him.

He was still disgruntled about it. Wasn’t Sid thinking about him at all? Zhenya could think of nothing else. 

He finally heard from Sid on the way home to Pittsburgh, after a crushing 4-1 loss. Zhenya, breaking his promise to lead the team, hadn’t managed even a single assist. But his heart still jumped in his chest when he felt his phone buzz in his pocket on the bus to the airport, and it was a message from Sid, just as he had hoped: **Sorry about the game :( come over tomorrow? 1pm**

 **ok))** Zhenya replied, and thought about Sid the whole way home.

He drove to Sid’s the next afternoon. It was a day off for the team, and Seryozha had taken Ksusha out for lunch and shopping; Zhenya hadn’t even needed to make any excuses about where he was going. The weather was overcast and cold. Zhenya was ready for spring and the playoffs, to have Sid back in the lineup, but in the meantime he was determined to prove himself. The team could rely on him. He wouldn’t let Sid down.

Sid came to the side door to meet him when Zhenya pulled into the driveway. He was wearing a walking boot, which made Zhenya simultaneously want to chirp him and scold him, the way his mother always did when someone was sick, like they would heal faster if she shamed them enough for daring to fall ill in the first place.

“Hey, Geno,” Sid said, smiling wide enough that Zhenya forgave him at once for the week of silence. 

Zhenya stopped at the bottom of the steps and gazed up at him. He had always been attracted to Sid, even before he recognized it for what it was, but it was much worse now that he knew how Sid looked during sex, flushed and pleased and hungry for it. His sweet face, his pink mouth that Zhenya was already so fond of. 

“What is it?” Sid asked, his smile fading. 

“We go upstairs?” Zhenya asked, and Sid’s smile came back full force.

Everyone was out, Sid told him as they climbed the narrow back staircase, Sid awkwardly going one step at a time because of his boot. “The kids are at school, and Nathalie’s got her board meeting this afternoon, and Mario went to Toronto for a couple of days. So we’ve got a few hours.”

“Good,” Zhenya said. It had been too long. He needed at least two rounds.

Sid had a few adjoining rooms at the top of the house, a sitting room and another room he was using as a walk-in closet, and his bedroom, small but with lots of windows to let in the winter light. The ceiling sloped sharply at one end of the bedroom. “It’s the old servants’ quarters,” Sid told him, grinning. “Kind of weird, eh? But nobody bugs me up here.”

The bed wasn’t big: probably a double, which Zhenya confirmed for himself by lying down on it and seeing how far his feet extended past the end of the mattress. The blankets were all crumpled up, and the floor and dresser were piled with clothes and shoes and assorted promotional jerseys. Zhenya was charmed by this insight into Sid’s natural habits. 

“You gonna leave your coat on the whole time?” Sid asked, still unaccountably lingering in the doorway.

“Too cold,” Zhenya said coyly.

“Body heat might be the only way to save you,” Sid said.

“Okay, let’s try,” Zhenya said, and unzipped his coat.

The bed wasn’t big. For both of them to fit, they had to lie tangled together, their legs interwoven as they kissed. Zhenya wasn’t cold now, under the covers with Sid’s big hot body crushed against his, too close, a little sweaty, and perfect. Sid kept one hand on Zhenya’s ass to hold him in place, and that turned into groping before long, his fingers dipping into the crease and teasing at Zhenya’s hole. Zhenya hoped Sid would want to finger him again, and maybe fuck him, Zhenya’s first time doing it with an actual dick.

Sid didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He kissed Zhenya’s mouth until Zhenya was hard and rubbing against him, then kissed his neck until Zhenya was pushing his ass into Sid’s grip. Zhenya thought he could come like that very easily, all of Sid’s bare skin against his own, Sid’s cock grinding against his with a little too much friction, so that he might be sore later: a reminder. Sid had come like this the last time they were together, rubbing off on Zhenya’s hip, his dick all covered in Zhenya’s come.

Zhenya was getting into it, finding a rhythm he liked, when Sid wrapped his free arm around Zhenya’s waist and tensed and rolled them over, so that Zhenya was on his back. He wasn’t at all unhappy to find himself there, especially when Sid straddled his hips and gave Zhenya easy access to his cock.

“Nice,” Zhenya said, curling his hand around Sid’s dick. He had touched four dicks that weren’t his own, and Sid’s was by far his favorite. “Pretty.”

Sid grinned. “Don’t ever use that word for my dick again.” 

“Sexy,” Zhenya tried. What else had he heard the guys say about girls in bars? “Hottie.”

Sid laughed his big goofy laugh and bent down for a kiss, awkward with both of them smiling into it. When he sat up again, he ran his hands over Zhenya’s chest and thumbed at his nipples. Something about his expression made Zhenya want to cover his face and hide.

“Geno,” Sid said. His face was pink, pinker than could be explained by some making out. “Would you. Will you fuck me?”

Zhenya stroked his thighs and considered him. Zhenya had certainly been eager to check that box: get it over with, find out if he liked it. But Sid didn’t need to rush. He had the rest of the season, and Zhenya at his willing disposal. And Sid’s body language, his rounded shoulders, the way his eyes tracked the movements of his hands and avoided Zhenya’s gaze, didn’t speak to Zhenya of eager anticipation.

“You want?” Zhenya asked.

Sid shrugged, his shoulders lingering by his ears for a long moment before they dropped again. “I mean. I know that’s what guys do with each other, so.”

In Zhenya’s admittedly limited experience, men did a whole variety of things together. “If you want, we try. But I like, uh. Hand, mouth. It’s good.”

“I like that stuff, too,” Sid said. Finally he met Zhenya’s gaze. His ears were red now to go along with his flushed cheeks. “But you like it, right? I mean. You liked my fingers.”

Zhenya had liked his fingers a lot. He had tried to downplay his enjoyment for maybe two minutes and then had gotten so caught up in the sensations that he forgot. He said, “I like.”

“Okay, so. Let’s just—unless you don’t want to,” Sid said, like there was any chance in the universe Zhenya wouldn’t want to do everything possible to his ass.

“We do,” Zhenya said, and Sid let out a breath and said, “I bought, uh. I’ve got lube.”

Zhenya put Sid on his back, so he could watch Sid’s face, partly for his own pleasure and partly to make sure he didn’t do something wrong without meaning to. Sid had the same brand of lube Zhenya used, and he wondered if Sid had gone out to buy it after that night at Zhenya’s: taking mental notes, preparing. Sid noticed everything; Zhenya wouldn’t put it past him.

“Hold,” he said, patting Sid’s knee, and Sid squinted at him for a moment before he got it, and pulled his leg against his chest and held it there, opening himself. Zhenya had spent some very enjoyable time touching and squeezing Sid’s ass, but he hadn’t gotten much of a chance to look, and he could feel himself going a little glassy-eyed as he stared at Sid’s balls and smooth bare perineum, perfectly hairless, and his small tight hole, flexing as Zhenya gaped.

“Quit it,” Sid said, shifting restlessly, and Zhenya fumbled the cap off the lube and got down to business.

He stroked his fingertips along the crease of Sid’s ass, smearing him with lube from his balls to his tailbone, brushing over Sid’s hole on each pass. Sid relaxed as Zhenya kept doing it without pushing inside, and Zhenya took that as his cue and rubbed his fingers more deliberately against Sid’s hole, the same soft circles he used to warm himself up. He watched Sid’s face as he did it. Sid looked like he was thinking hard about how it felt and needed more data before he was willing to draw a conclusion.

“Okay?” Zhenya said. He wanted so badly for Sid to enjoy everything they did together.

“Yeah, it’s. It feels pretty good,” Sid said. “You can keep going.”

Okay. Zhenya pressed in with his middle finger, firmly, not giving Sid any time to overthink it, and slid in all the way to the knuckle, carefully but not stopping. Sid clenched around him and made a sound Zhenya couldn’t interpret, a low grunt deep in his chest.

“It’s bad?” Zhenya asked. He remembered his own first time, how strange it had felt, how he hadn’t been sure at first whether he liked it. He would do only this for a while, and let Sid decide if he wanted more.

“No?” Sid said. “I mean.” He hiked his knee higher against his chest. “It’s fine.”

What a ringing endorsement. Zhenya drew his finger out and pushed back in, slowly, watching Sid’s face. Sid chewed on his lip and stared at the ceiling, and maybe he liked it and maybe he didn’t, but Zhenya couldn’t tell from his expression.

Zhenya added another finger and worked them gently, searching. He was used to the feedback from his own body, and with Sid he was going in blind. Sid was tense everywhere, his hamstring flexing in his own grasp as he held his leg, his ass tight around Zhenya’s fingers, his chest expanding as he took deep calming breaths. His cock had softened some. This wasn’t working. Sid was so stubborn, he didn’t even like it—but then he went even tenser and grunted again, and said, “Wow, uh.”

“There?” Zhenya said. He rubbed again at the same spot. “Like?”

“It feels pretty good,” Sid said. 

Zhenya worked him over and watched Sid’s cock harden again, and a pink flush spread down his chest. He put his free hand over Sid’s on his thigh, helping him, and felt Sid relax into his grip. 

“Good,” Zhenya said. God, Sid looked so good like this, legs and mouth both open, his hair curling as it dampened with sweat. Zhenya was ready to throw caution to the wind and put Sid on all fours and just. _Fuck_ him. He patted Sid’s thigh and said, “Okay?”

“Yeah, just—do it,” Sid said. He reached down to grasp Zhenya wrist, and Zhenya eased out his fingers and moved out of the way as Sid sat up. “Hang on, I’ve got—I bought condoms.”

“Don’t need,” Zhenya said, watching Sid lean over to open the nightstand drawer. Did Sid think Zhenya could knock him up? Zhenya was happy to try, but he didn’t expect to be met with much success.

“Well, it’s—safer,” Sid said, bright red.

He hadn’t been too worried about that when he was sucking Zhenya’s dick. Whatever. “Okay,” Zhenya said, and accepted the foil packet Sid handed him. He would wear a condom if it made Sid feel better.

“You want me on my back?” Sid asked. “Or—”

“Yes, it’s good,” Zhenya said. Maybe a different position would be easier, but he really wanted to be able to see Sid’s face.

Sid gripped Zhenya’s shoulders, his fingers digging in as his thighs parted around Zhenya’s hips. His wide eyes stared up at Zhenya. Had Zhenya ever looked like that, afraid but not backing down? Was he afraid right now? Of course he was. He had never been someone’s first.

“Do it,” Sid said, and Zhenya took a deep breath and pushed inside.

Sid’s fingers bit in. The tight clutch of his ass gripped Zhenya’s dick as he sank inside. When Zhenya was halfway in, Sid winced and pushed at his shoulders and said, “Sorry, pull out, I don’t—”

Zhenya did, too hastily, making Sid wince again. “Sorry,” Zhenya said, not sure what had gone wrong. 

“I don’t think I like it,” Sid said. He scrunched his face at Zhenya, a goofy expression that soothed Zhenya’s fears. Sid wasn’t in any serious distress. “Sorry. It just feels like I’m taking a shit.”

Zhenya huffed. It _did_ kind of feel like that, but he liked it.

“Sorry,” Sid said again, petting at Zhenya’s shoulders.

Zhenya sat up and stripped off the condom. “It’s okay, Sid. I don’t care.” He liked fucking, but there were other things he liked just as well or better. If he never got to put his dick in Sid’s ass, he wasn’t going to cry about it. 

He dropped the condom in the wastebin and rubbed his palms up the insides of Sid’s thighs. “We do maybe, um.” He took a breath. Why couldn’t he ask for it? Because he was still waiting to see that disgusted look on Sid’s face again. He said, “You fuck me, okay?”

Sid’s lips parted. His eyes widened again. His hands slid up Zhenya’s neck into his hair. “You’d like that?”

“Please,” Zhenya said. His experience with Fedya had been wonderful, and he didn’t have any regrets. But in a perfect world, where he got his heart’s most secret and cherished wish, his first time would have been with Sid. 

“I’d really like to,” Sid said, and Zhenya could do nothing but lean down and kiss him.

Sid spent a long time fingering him, which Zhenya didn’t think was necessary; he knew how to relax for it. But Sid wouldn’t be rushed. “I like doing it,” he said, smiling down at Zhenya, “I like watching you,” and how could Zhenya argue with that? He couldn’t; he gave up and let Sid do what he wanted.

It wasn’t like he was suffering. It felt good, and then it felt _really_ good when Sid finally figured out how to work his fingers inside Zhenya just so. “Oh, like that?” Sid said, and did it over and over while Zhenya tried not to squirm and then gave up and planted his feet on the mattress and rocked against Sid’s hand.

“How do you want to do it?” Sid asked at last, sliding his free hand up Zhenya’s leg. “Like this?”

Zhenya was well beyond shame by then, his dick leaking all over his belly, sweating and urgent and stretched around Sid’s fingers. He wanted Sid on top of him; he wanted to see Sid’s face. “Like this,” he agreed.

Sid pushing inside him was a long burning toe-curling pressure and opening and fullness. He was bigger than Fedya’s dildo, and Zhenya had to breathe carefully through the initial discomfort, forcing himself not to tense up. He knew it would get better in a minute.

And it did, with Sid mouthing at his neck and saying, “Geno, oh my God,” the way he did. Sid was heavy on top of him and huge inside of him and Zhenya had to close his eyes, overwhelmed by the feelings in his body and his hungry yearning heart.

Sid lay on him and fucked him so slow, kissing Zhenya’s face and his ear and his neck, clumsy kisses as he moved inside Zhenya’s body. His torso was damp with sweat where it was pressed against Zhenya’s. The bedframe creaked in time with Sid’s motions. Zhenya lifted his arms to rest on the mattress beside his head, and Sid took the cue and pinned him, his hands curling around Zhenya’s wrists. That was it: exactly what Zhenya wanted, the relief of finally getting it so sweet and sharp that he could only express it as a moan.

“Oh, _Geno_ ,” Sid breathed, his hips moving, his cock dragging in and out of Zhenya’s sensitive body. Zhenya wrapped his legs around Sid’s waist and shifted until Sid was getting him at the perfect angle, right there, _oh_ , and his belly was rubbing against Zhenya’s dick with every hard grind in. That was it, that was exactly it, and Zhenya’s face was hot and he was coiled tight, and he heard the noises he was making but he couldn’t stop them and didn’t want to, not with the way Sid was breathing hard and mouthing at Zhenya’s neck, as into it as Zhenya was, here in it with him at last.

Zhenya was going to come; he couldn’t stop it.

“Are you,” Sid said, “Geno?” and Zhenya tried to move his hands without thinking, wanting to touch Sid’s back or his ass, and Sid wouldn’t let him: he tightened his grip and held Zhenya down more firmly. Exactly what Zhenya wanted. 

He arched his back and squeezed tight and spilled between them, shaking and shaking until he was all spent.

“Can I,” Sid said, and Zhenya said, “Yes, Sid, yes,” and held Sid’s sweet sweaty weight until he was finished.

When Sid got up to use the bathroom down the hall, Zhenya thought about moving and decided against it. He stayed right where he was, his arms where Sid had gripped them, his thighs lazily splayed, and basked in the warm haze he was wrapped in. He couldn’t stay forever—he wanted to be gone before anyone got home—but it was so good to lie there, well-used and relaxed, the sheets still warm from Sid’s body.

Sid came back, shaking water off his hands, and stopped in the doorway to look at Zhenya, a smile blooming on his face. “Hey, G.”

Would he look at Zhenya like that, if this were real?

It wasn’t real. He shouldn’t nurture any hopes, not even the smallest, faintest flutter.

“Don’t stare, come here,” Zhenya said.

Sid climbed back onto the bed and lay down right where he had been before, on top of Zhenya, between his spread legs. He slid his hands up Zhenya’s arms and tangled their fingers together. “You’re a mess,” he said, grinning, and Zhenya admittedly was, still smeared with his own come, which was now getting smeared on Sid.

He didn’t think Sid cared too much. He squeezed Sid’s hands. Sid’s smile softened and warmed. He bent his head for a kiss.

“Go again?” Zhenya asked. They could make an even bigger mess.

Sid kissed him again. “I bet we’ve got time.”

\+ + +

He had sex with Sid as much as he could manage it. The scheduling could be tricky; they had a hard time making plans in advance. Zhenya received more than one unexpected text from Sid saying, **Come over?** But they made it work: at least once or twice a week for most of February, as Sid recovered and Zhenya played—well, not terribly, although most of the credit went to Bugsy and Sykie, working magic on his wings. One Sunday morning, Zhenya skipped out on church by claiming a headache and spent a guilty, languid morning sucking Sid’s dick in his own bed for once. Sid talked his way into joining the team on a trip to Montreal, and they ordered pizza and watched a movie until Zhenya got tired of playing coy and rolled Sid over and dry-humped him until Sid came in his shorts, which was unexpected and messy but, in Zhenya’s opinion, delightful.

He was happier than he had been in—a long time; since before he came to Pittsburgh. He knew this thing with Sid wouldn’t last; Sid would lose interest, or decide he was done experimenting, or that it wasn’t worth the risk; Zhenya had no expectations. But he would enjoy every minute until it was over.

At the end of the month, in a last-minute trade deadline deal, Army was shipped off to Atlanta—in exchange for Hossa, and Zhenya couldn’t help being excited about that, although of course he would miss Army; and he was sorry for Sid. They were in New York when they got the news, and Zhenya didn’t see Sid until the team was back in Pittsburgh three days later, and by then it was old news. Army was gone already, on a flight the same day he was traded, and Sid seemed fine at practice, sitting in the stands for a while to watch them because he still wasn’t allowed to skate.

Still. Zhenya sat next to him at video review, and in the commotion before the meeting, as guys straggled in from the weight room, he said, “Sorry for Army.”

Sid shrugged. “That’s hockey.”

They had all lost friends to trades; it was nothing new. It was part of the game. Zhenya leaned against Sid for a moment, pressing their shoulders together in wordless solidarity.

“Hey, uh,” Sid said. “You wanna go for lunch after this?”

Zhenya squinted at him. Was Sid going to crawl under the table at the sandwich place and suck his dick?

Sid rolled his eyes. “We don’t—I mean _lunch_ , Geno. Can’t we just hang out?”

They _could_ , and they had in the past, but not since they started fucking. Zhenya tried to make his eyebrows convey his thoughts.

“I like spending time with you,” Sid said, deadly earnest. 

Sure: spending time sucking Zhenya’s dick. But Zhenya did let Sid take him out to lunch, and Sid ordered for him so he wouldn’t have to talk to the waitress, and he let Zhenya finish his sweet potato fries, and patiently listened to Zhenya tell a story about Natasha trying to put a costume on Albert. It was a good afternoon.

Sid was back in the lineup by early March. They won the first game he played in and lost the second. Sid was still better than anyone else on the ice, but to Zhenya’s eyes he looked rusty—no surprise, after being out for more than a month. Nobody expected him to be in peak form his first week back. But he seemed glum when Zhenya went over the day after they got home from that road trip—parking down the street and going the rest of the way on foot, so that Sid could sneak him in the back way and up the stairs. They had stopped being entirely careful.

“You’re sad face,” Zhenya said, when they were safely in Sid’s rooms with the door shut and locked. He crouched to remove his shoes and then stood again to take Sid’s face in his hands. A surge of affection rose in him, lifting his heart on its tide. He wondered how long it would take that feeling to recede again at the other end of all this. He had grown so fond of Sid’s face, sad or not, laughing at Zhenya in bed, intently focused during practice, red and delighted as the guys chirped him for something. Every version of Sid that Zhenya knew.

“I’m not _sad_ ,” Sid said, and started unzipping Zhenya’s coat. “Hurry up, Nathalie wants to take me shopping later.”

Sid blew him, because Sid always wanted to blow him. “Fuck me?” Zhenya said hopefully, after he came, knowing that Sid wouldn’t; they didn’t have time. 

Sid chewed on his lip. “We probably—I want to. But.”

“Okay, it’s fine,” Zhenya said. He touched Sid’s wet mouth. Sid’s blowjobs had begun to fully live up to the implicit promise of his mouth, and Zhenya wasn’t certain he would survive any further improvements. “What you like?”

“Your hand is good,” Sid said, and so Zhenya got to hold him and kiss him and touch his big lovely pink cock and listen to him groan as he came. They were both getting good at this now: at each other.

Sid got out of bed when they were done and looked out the window and checked his phone, and then climbed back beneath the blankets and tucked himself against Zhenya’s side with a contented sigh, his head on Zhenya’s chest and his foot sliding between Zhenya’s calves. “We’ve got a little time,” he said.

“Good,” Zhenya said. He stroked Sid’s hair and his slightly sweaty back and wondered if they had enough time for him to take a small nap. He had told Ksusha he was going out to run some unspecified errands, and he would have to go home with at least one shopping bag to justify his absence.

Sid trailed his fingers down Zhenya’s ribcage, nudging the hollow between each bone. After a few minutes, he said, “You know, um.” 

Zhenya waited, but Sid didn’t continue. “Yes?”

Sid sucked in a deep breath. “I’m not sure I like girls. Maybe at all.”

Zhenya stared at the ceiling, his hand slowing on Sid’s back. He didn’t know what to think or how to respond, or even if his voice would cooperate. He’d known all along that Sid was experimenting, but he hadn’t expected this to be the outcome. 

Sid, undeterred by Zhenya’s silence, kept going. “I thought I did. Like, I had sex with girls a few times, and it was fine. I got off. I thought guys were just exaggerating, you know? Like, jerking off is way better, but nobody wants to admit it. But then with you, the first time, I felt like—like the top of my head was coming off, it was just. And then I understood what the big deal was.”

“I’m so good,” Zhenya said, and then immediately regretted his levity. But what did Sid expect him to say? He hadn’t been prepared for this conversation. 

“Ha ha,” Sid said sarcastically. He pushed up onto his elbow to look down at Zhenya, with his hair all fluffy from Zhenya’s fingers. “I’m just. Scared, I guess. Because I want a family, you know? I want to get married and have a bunch of kids, and I always thought that would be pretty easy, or like. Not that I think I’m some great catch, but I didn’t think it would be _complicated_. And now it’s really complicated.”

Oh, _Sid_. Zhenya caught Sid’s free hand and brought it to his mouth to press a hard kiss to Sid’s knuckles, trying to tell Sid all of the things he knew he shouldn’t say. 

Sid’s mouth twisted. “Sorry. I know it’s worse for you, uh. With Russia and everything. I don’t mean—”

“Sid, I like girls,” Zhenya said. Maybe—he would admit it to himself—not as much as he liked guys, but still a lot, so much that he thought there was a good chance he might marry a woman, if he could find someone who would have him. “So, maybe not worse.”

“Well, it’s not a competition,” Sid said. He lay down again, and Zhenya turned toward him and wrapped both arms around him, tight, tight, holding him there, bursting with emotion, and why couldn’t he let himself have this, privately, until it was over? What he felt was love.

“It’s hard,” he said, and his voice sounded steady, somehow, and no different than his voice ever sounded. “You think—it’s easy, you normal, like everyone. But you not.”

“Yeah,” Sid said. “Or, like—you think everyone’s the way you are. Like, everyone feels this way, everyone does these things. And then you realize it’s just you.” He shifted, pressing closer to Zhenya. “But it’s not just me.” He buried his face in Zhenya’s chest, and Zhenya waited, because Sid was holding his breath, the words there on his tongue but not yet spoken. Sid said, “I’m glad it’s you. I’m glad—I’m—I don’t feel alone. Because you’re here.”

It was love inside him, burning in him. He knew sorrow waited for him, but he would take this joy now, while he could have it. “Sid,” he whispered, and held Sid as close as he could, wishing he could push himself inside Sid’s skin and become one body. 

Sid clung to him and took a few deep, shuddering breaths. Then some of the tension eased from him, and he sighed and sank over onto his back, still circled in Zhenya’s arms. He offered Zhenya a rueful smile. “When did you know?” he asked. “That you like guys.”

Zhenya waffled internally for a moment, but he didn’t want to lie after Sid had been so open with him. “Last year,” he said.

He watched Sid’s face travel through a number of different expressions. “So, you—but I thought.” He reached up to trace Zhenya’s jawline. “I thought you were, like. You had it all figured out.”

“I do,” Zhenya said, because if he’d managed to fool Sid, he obviously had his shit together.

“Last year,” Sid said quietly. “When—”

“Last spring,” Zhenya said. “I go to club. In Pittsburgh. Few times.”

“You—oh, Geno.” Sid curled his hand around the back of Zhenya’s neck. “Were you scared?”

“Yes,” Zhenya said. “But I have to. It’s like.” He thought back to the desperation he had felt, that he had to do it _right then_ , he couldn’t wait for the summer or even the anonymity of a bigger city on a road trip. Maybe he had been trying not to think about Sasha—to cauterize those memories. “I need to know.”

“You let me think you were, like. Really experienced,” Sid said, scratching his fingers through the hair at Zhenya’s nape. “But I guess it’s still pretty new for you, eh?”

“You five for me,” Zhenya admitted. “Five men.”

“I mean. That’s more people than I’ve had sex with ever,” Sid said. “So I’m still impressed.”

Zhenya laughed and tugged Sid down against him so he could kiss Sid a few times, feeling the curve of Sid’s smile against his mouth. 

Sid broke away to tuck his head beneath Zhenya’s chin. “You know, I kept—after I saw you in New York. I kept telling myself, like. If Geno likes it, then maybe it’s not so bad. It’s okay for me to like it, too.”

“Yes, it’s okay,” Zhenya said. He held Sid in his arms, big and warm, feeling him breathe. Would it feel like this, if Sid loved him back? “We like together.”

“I really like it,” Sid said. He kissed Zhenya’s throat, and then jerked as his phone began vibrating on the nightstand, buzzing loudly as it shivered across the surface. “Fuck,” he said, and sat up to grab it. “Fuck, I gotta go, where’s your underwear?”

He bundled Zhenya into his clothes and down the staircase, Zhenya with one hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter, giddy and probably making way too much noise. “Shut up, you’re so loud,” Sid complained, shoving him out the side door, but he was grinning, too, and he kissed Zhenya at the gate, with tongue, before he pushed Zhenya out into the street.

\+ + +

Sid’s ankle benched him again after their next game. “Needs another week,” he told the team. “Little sore after Washington, that’s all.” No big deal, he was trying to tell them, but Zhenya knew it _was_ a big deal and that Sid was desperate to play. He tried to find Sid after practice, but Sid had already left by the time Zhenya was finished in the weight room.

He didn’t see Sid again for a few days. They had no games, only practices, and Sid wasn’t there, and he didn’t text Zhenya and tell him to come over. Zhenya left it alone. Sid’s feelings weren’t his business.

He did text Sid once, just to say hi, and Sid didn’t respond.

They beat the Flyers, 7-1, and Sid was in the press box for that game and came down to the locker room afterward to congratulate everyone. He looked good in his suit. Zhenya tracked his movements through the room and hoped his staring wasn’t too obvious. Who would notice, though, other than Sid? Zhenya had been staring for a year and a half and nobody had called him on it.

“Great work, G,” Sid said, when he finally made his way to Zhenya’s stall. He held up his fist for Zhenya to bump. “Four points, not bad.”

His crooked smile eased the nagging uncertainty Zhenya had been carting around for the past few days. “I tell you,” Zhenya said. “It’s playoffs.”

“Yeah,” Sid said. His expression softened into something Zhenya had previously seen only in bed. “You promised, eh?”

Zhenya glanced around. Seryozha had already gone off to shower, impatient as always to get home to Ksusha, and nobody else was paying them any mind. Still, he lowered his voice as he said, “You come New York?” They were flying out the next day for a single away game.

“Probably,” Sid said. “Game-time decision.” He tucked his hands in his pockets. “So, after dinner—”

“Yes,” Zhenya said.

He went for dinner in New York with some of the guys: Sykie, Roots, Whits. In the last weeks, with Sid out of the lineup, he had finally succumbed to Seryozha’s nagging and started spending more time with the team. Every time he went to dinner without Seryozha, he wished he had stayed in and gotten room service; the conversation moved too quickly, and the restaurants were too loud, and usually he was on his phone and mentally checked out by the end of the meal. He could manage one on one, but talking in a group was still beyond him. But the next time he received a dinner invitation, he forced himself to go, because he had promised Sid he would take care of the team, and that meant being a part of it.

At least he was trying. 

Sid texted him while he was walking back to the hotel, and he went directly to Sid’s room so that Talbo couldn’t trap him into any movie watching or post-dinner snack runs. Sid opened the door wearing nothing but a pair of basketball shorts, and Zhenya’s heart started pounding at once. It had been more than a week since the last time, that morning at Sid’s.

“God, c’mere,” Sid said, and dragged Zhenya into the room.

Sid held him down and fucked him as rough as Zhenya wanted, two pillows stuffed beneath Zhenya’s ass so Sid could get deep, Sid’s hands pressing Zhenya’s shoulders into the mattress as his hips snapped in hard thrusts. Zhenya came twice, feeling tears leak from his eyes the second time from how intense it was, Sid’s cock forcing the orgasm from him.

“Come on, come on, do it,” Sid chanted, as Zhenya bit down on his own hand to muffle his moans.

When they were done, he got to lie on top of Sid and soak in his warmth and listen to the quiet murmur of the TV, and feel Sid play with his hair. It was perfect.

He was so wrung out that it took him a while to notice Sid’s conspicuous silence. Sid liked to talk, and he liked to talk after sex, and usually by now he would be ruminating aloud about the game or whatever while Zhenya made encouraging noises and thought about ordering more food, because he was probably done growing but was somehow still hungry at all times. But tonight Sid had nothing to say.

Zhenya finally pushed himself up and propped his forearms on Sid’s chest so he could look at Sid’s face. His expression was solemn. Maybe his ankle was bothering him, or he wanted to kick Zhenya out and go to sleep early and wasn’t sure how to do it without being rude.

“Okay?” Zhenya asked.

“Um,” Sid said, and cleared his throat. “Geno, listen. This has been really great, the past couple of months. With you.”

“Yes,” Zhenya said cautiously. It had been for him, too, but he didn’t know why Sid was bringing it up now.

“Yeah,” Sid said. He held Zhenya’s gaze for another moment, and then his eyes darted to the side. “But I think we should. Stop. Probably. Before things get too complicated.”

A hollow pit opened in Zhenya’s belly. This was the end? 

He sat up and leaned against the headboard, drawing his knees up against his chest. He hadn’t noticed any warning signs that Sid was growing tired of him.

Maybe he had. Maybe that was why Sid hadn’t texted him, and had ignored Zhenya’s message. 

“Stop,” he repeated. The word hurt, coming up through his throat. More than he had thought it might.

He had known it would end. It wasn’t a surprise. He was going to be fine.

He would be fine.

“Yeah,” Sid said, and took a few breaths, and then he said, “I’m starting to get, um. Feelings. About you, I mean. So. It could get messy.”

Zhenya turned his head to stare down at Sid, shocked. Had he misheard? Did that word mean something different from what he thought it meant? 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sid said, his cheeks flushing red. “I can’t help it. I tried not to. But you’re so—” He broke off and covered his face with his hands. “We jumped into things a little fast. And it’s got me all mixed up, I guess.”

“Let’s date,” Zhenya said. “Boyfriend.” Unanticipated hope throbbed in his chest, raw and stunning. _Feelings_.

Sid spread his fingers to peek at Zhenya through his hands. “You would want that?” 

He was unbelievable. Zhenya straddled his waist and took his hands and pulled them away, forcing him to stop hiding. Sid blinked up at him, his lips pressed together. His eyes had a wet sheen to them that crunched into Zhenya’s ribcage and left a mark he would bear for the rest of his life, probably.

“Sid,” he said, and bent to press his lips to Sid’s cheek, slow and soft, with all of his love conveyed in that kiss.

Sid made a harsh noise and wrapped his arms around Zhenya and held him, and for the span of a few perfect heartbeats, Zhenya thought he might get to have everything—all of it, hockey and also someone to love him, the real him, the man he was trying to become. But then Sid drew a shuddering breath and said, “We can’t.”

Zhenya sat up again. He touched his fingertips to Sid’s chest and studied him. Sid looked anguished, like he was breaking his own heart, but also determined. His on-ice look, his captain look. He had made up his mind.

“We could win a Cup together,” Sid said. “Don’t you think?”

“Don’t jinx,” Zhenya said. Oh, he could see where Sid’s thoughts had taken him.

“I don’t want to mess it up for the team,” Sid said. “We need you. You’re so good. We need you in Pittsburgh. And if we do this, I’ll probably mess it up, and I just. I don’t want you to leave.”

Zhenya scoffed. “Oh, I leave Pittsburgh? Now you worry? You think I don’t know?” Did Sid honestly think Zhenya hadn’t considered how badly things could go wrong? He knew what might happen. A painful breakup, awkward tension in the room, and that would be it for him; he would have to go elsewhere. But that was his risk to take, and Sid didn’t get to decide for him.

Sid blinked up at him. “Well, I mean. I’m not saying you haven’t thought about it.”

“I think always,” Zhenya said. “You see me in New York, you don’t talk, I know I leave team. Maybe trade, maybe free agency. But can’t stay. It’s your team.”

“It’s _our_ team,” Sid said uncertainly. His eyebrows drew together. “Isn’t it? I thought you—don’t you like being a Penguin?”

To his fury, Zhenya felt his eyes water. He looked away and scrubbed the back of his hand across his face. “Of course I like. But I’m not—you Sidney Crosby, you—they don’t trade, don’t let you go. You stay here. And I know, if you mad, if you don’t talk, someone see, and I’m problem. Oh, Malkin is trouble, Malkin is not team player. Then I go.”

Sid took Zhenya’s hands and gripped them. “How can you think that? I wouldn’t let that happen. You’re so important to this team, you’re—don’t you know how much everyone likes you? The guys, the fans, the—they aren’t going to _trade_ you. I’m just worried that you’ll, like. You’ll hate me. And then you’ll want to leave. And I love playing with you, I don’t—I want you to stay.”

Zhenya tugged his hands out of Sid’s grasp. Anger and frustration foamed in his guts. Sid wasn’t listening to him, Sid would never understand, Sid _belonged_ here, he spoke the language, the press loved him, the fans worshipped him, he was Pittsburgh’s chosen son, he could break Zhenya’s heart a million times and it wouldn’t matter. He would get to stay.

“It’s just jersey,” he said. “I’m Penguin for now. You Penguin for always. Okay? It’s different. You don’t know. You don’t decide for me. You tired of me, fine. But don’t say you do for me.”

“You’re mad?” Sid said, like he was somehow only just now realizing. “Geno, I didn’t mean—”

“No, fuck off,” Zhenya said. “How you say, oh I have feelings, but we can’t. Just say you tired. Don’t lie, don’t—” He was too angry to stay here any longer. He wanted to go back to his own room, where he wouldn’t have to look at Sid’s stupid clueless face. He climbed off the bed and started hunting for his clothes.

“I’m not lying,” Sid said. He sat up, floundering around in the sheets. Zhenya couldn’t look at him, his bare chest, his soft pink nipples, his stupid face that Zhenya loved. “Geno, I feel—come on, don’t leave. We should talk about this—”

“No,” Zhenya said. He found his jeans and his shirt and pulled them on, not bothering to look for his briefs. Let Sid deal with it. A nice memento of their time together. “You act weird, you mad, you don’t talk, it’s _my_ problem, okay? It’s problem for me. And you never think, you—” He broke off. He didn’t know how to keep going. 

Sid was off the bed now, coming for him, hands outstretched, face stamped with worry. “Geno, I’m sorry, you’re right, I don’t want you to—we can talk about it more, come on—”

“No,” Zhenya said, and then he made the mistake of looking at Sid’s anguished expression and felt himself soften. He wanted to be angry still, and storm out of Sid’s hotel room in a self-righteous huff. But he wasn’t a child anymore, to sulk and refuse to talk. That was exactly why Seryozha never took him seriously. He drew a deep breath and let it out, and said, “I need—be alone, calm down. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Sid said. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, standing there naked on the short rough carpet, halfway to breaking Zhenya’s heart. 

“We talk more,” Zhenya said, because he wasn’t giving up so easily. “Not tonight.”

“Okay,” Sid said again. Zhenya softened further and kissed Sid’s cheek before he left.

\+ + +

He regretted his dramatics in the morning. He should have stayed and worked it through, instead of leaving the conversation half-finished. He texted Sid: **sorry(( talk soon**

Sid didn’t reply, but he smiled at Zhenya from across the room at breakfast, a sweet private smile just for the two of them, and Zhenya’s traitorous heart oozed around in his chest, melted by love. 

He could talk Sid out of ending it. What a stupid idea. There was no reason to. Sid was scared, and he was overreacting. When had he started thinking about this? Zhenya still didn’t have much insight into what went on in Sid’s head. Well, it was nonsense; they didn’t need to stop.

It was nonsense.

He thought about it all day, lost in happy contemplation as he changed after skate and lay in bed for his nap. Even losing to the Rangers couldn’t puncture his good mood. On the flight home that night, he slid up the window shade and stared into the empty darkness outside and bubbled over with hope and wonder, the giddy emotions layered beneath his initial shock. The frustration of losing ebbed away as Zhenya tried to mentally reconstruct every detail of Sid’s expression as he confessed. _Feelings_.

That last time at Sid’s place, when Zhenya had felt so much, Sid had been feeling it, too. Zhenya had tried so hard not to long for it, to remind himself again and again that Sid would never return his feelings. But he had been wrong, and learning that Sid did feel something, even as he tried to end it, had dredged up all of Zhenya’s hidden and disregarded hopes.

“What are you smiling about?” Seryozha asked him.

“I’m excited about practice tomorrow,” Zhenya said. “I love waking up early.”

“Well, don’t tell me, then,” Seryozha said, and went back to his book.

But Sid had no sweet smiles during practice, only a few long sober glances from across the ice. He’d been doing his own thinking, then, and not of the nature Zhenya had hoped for. Zhenya tried not to let it chip away at his optimism, but the way Sid kept looking at him and then away was sharply reminiscent of how Sid had ignored him for that month after New York. 

He would have to leave, if it went wrong. He knew that. But would it be so bad? Guys switched teams all the time, through trades or signings. It was a normal part of the business. He could get to know new teammates, a new city. He could visit the Gonchars in Moscow over the summer. 

Sid thought they could win the Cup together, and Zhenya—well, he thought that, too. Sid was the best. He wanted to love Sid and be with him, but that was a new dream overlying the ancient, deep-rooted dream of playing hockey together. What was most important to him? What did he want most? What would he regret more?

He could have both. He could have Sid on the ice and also in his bed. There was no reason it couldn’t work out.

“Pay attention, Gene,” Bugsy yelled at him, and Zhenya forced himself to get his head out of the clouds and in the game. 

He didn’t have a chance to talk to Sid after practice. Seryozha wanted to get home, and Sid was still talking to reporters at his stall when they left. Zhenya texted him from the car: **talk? today?**

**Can’t** , Sid replied, after long enough that Zhenya had already given up. **Sorry, Nathalie’s home**

Nathalie had been home before, and Sid had still snuck him upstairs and sucked his dick. He was making excuses. Zhenya scowled and threw his phone down onto the bed. The hard seed of doubt that had sprouted in him at practice sent roots down into the dark. Sid couldn’t decide for Zhenya, but he could decide for himself, and then what could Zhenya do about it? He couldn’t force Sid to be with him if Sid didn’t want to.

They would talk about it, and Zhenya would convince him. It was fine. He didn’t need to worry. Everything would work out.

He saw Sid only briefly the next day, in the locker room after the game, which they won, a victory that did nothing to ease Zhenya’s growing dread. Sid came around and smiled at him and said, “Good game,” but he said that to everyone; he smiled at everyone. 

“Sid,” Zhenya said urgently. “We talk?”

Sid’s expression flickered out of its careful smile. “Tomorrow,” he said. He glanced aside, to see who was listening. “I’ll text.”

Zhenya had trouble sleeping that night. After half an hour of lying fruitlessly in bed, he got up and went out to his car and drove back downtown to the arena. The highways were quiet at that time of night, a few cars passing by going the other direction, their headlights cutting through the dark. He watched the bridge appear and then vanish beneath him as he crossed over, and the skyscrapers of downtown, and finally the white dome of the arena, like half of an egg. 

Could he stay here, in Pittsburgh, and make the Penguins his team? Would he give this up? Would he risk it? This city where he had found himself, where he had learned to stop being afraid. What did he want most?

He didn’t know. His head was a black muddle. There were no answers.

His doubt had sprouted leaves, tender and freshly green. He cultivated it all through practice the next day, watching Sid sit in the stands and chat with everyone who went to say hello to him. He would have chatted with Zhenya, probably, but Zhenya didn’t go to say hello. He wanted Sid to reach out; he wanted Sid to text him.

And Sid finally did, that afternoon. **Now? Everyone’s out**

 **yes now** , Zhenya sent, and ducked into the kitchen to tell Ksusha he was going out.

Sid met him at the gate, wearing a hoodie that made Zhenya want to crawl in bed with him and take a long nap, sharing breath as they slept, their bodies warm and close. He leaned in for a kiss as soon as he was inside and the door was closed, and Sid kissed him back for a moment, long enough to make Zhenya’s heart lift, and then plummet when Sid pulled back and Zhenya saw his face.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Sid said.

He followed Sid upstairs and into his bedroom. Sid crawled beneath the covers and raised his eyebrows expectantly, and Zhenya let out a breath and unzipped his jeans. He didn’t know what was going to happen, but if Sid wanted to lie in bed, Zhenya was at least going to be comfortable.

He lay curled against Sid with his head on Sid’s chest. His heart pounded with uncertainty and fear. Had Sid changed his mind? Had Zhenya?

Long minutes passed. Sid’s hand rested on Zhenya’s back, cupping the bump of his spine at the base of his neck. Zhenya wanted to stay like this forever: no hockey, no team, no hard decisions. Only Sid with him, alone in this room.

Finally, Sid said, “I still think we need to stop.”

Zhenya closed his eyes. The pain of it was bright but not unexpected.

“It’s not about you,” Sid said. “I’m just. It’s all new to me, you know? And I feel like it’s getting too serious. For me. If I do this with you, it’ll be. It’s going to be a lot, you know? Like, I’m going to fall in love with you. And I’m not ready for it.”

Zhenya turned to burrow his face into Sid’s armpit, hiding in the darkness, in the smell of him. “Love,” he whispered.

Sid’s hand tightened on him. “My head’s not in the game. I’ve been—pretty distracted. And we’ve got the playoffs coming up, and just. That’s what I need to focus on. I’ve gotta—I have to lead the team. You know? I can’t be distracted.”

Zhenya had known it wouldn’t last. He had known it wasn’t real. He should be grateful for what he’d had, two and a half good months with Sid, and what he hoped he would have after: a captain, a friend. 

His eyes burned. He had known this would hurt. He had prepared himself. He was going to be fine.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Sid went on. His other hand came to rest on Zhenya’s head, his fingers sliding through Zhenya’s hair. “And you’re right, I mean. I don’t want you to have to worry about getting traded. And I feel like I can’t trust myself not to mess it up.”

“Maybe you don’t,” Zhenya said. Like Ksusha had written: a happy ending. But joy seemed very far away from him now.

“I’m scared,” Sid said. “People might find out, and just. I can’t. Hockey’s the most important thing to me. At least right now. I want to win with you.”

Zhenya sat up. Sid gazed up at him, and for once Zhenya could see everything he was thinking, all of his earnest broken-hearted determination. He thought he was doing the right thing: the only thing there was for him to do. 

Hockey was the most important thing to Zhenya, too. Hockey with Sid, which he had now, and didn’t want to lose. He couldn’t tell Sid he was wrong, because he probably wasn’t wrong.

“Okay,” Zhenya said, and watched Sid’s eyes close and squeeze tight. “We stop.”

Sid nodded a few times. He swallowed. “Will you. Could you stay here? For a little while?”

“Oh, Sid,” Zhenya said. Sid’s eyelashes were wet. Zhenya felt bruised inside and out. “Yes, of course.”

He lay down again. Sid went back to playing with his hair. Zhenya’s ear pressed to Sid’s chest heard the steady thrum of his heart beating, and his ear exposed to the air heard a bird calling outside, the gentle patter of rain start up on the roof. Some part of him would be left forever in this moment, sacrificed to form this memory. 

He gently pinched Sid’s hip to get his attention. Sid made a questioning noise in response, and Zhenya said, “I tell you something.”

“Sure,” Sid said. “Anything.”

“When I’m fifteen, my agent—Gennady,” Zhenya said, and Sid nodded, his chin brushing against Zhenya’s head. He knew Genya, who was in Pittsburgh a lot, and often at the rink, keeping tabs on Zhenya. “He show me tape. It’s you, uh, from good game, good play—”

“Highlights,” Sid said. “Really?”

“Yes,” Zhenya said. “He say, it’s good player. Crosby. Soon he’s best. Watch him. So I watch, and I see you’re so good. I think, I want to play him. And then you drafted, and it’s same team, and I think: I play him with Penguins.”

“Geno,” Sid said quietly.

“I come because of you,” Zhenya said. “To NHL, to Pittsburgh. Because I want play hockey with you.”

Sid made a choked noise. “Geno—”

“We play hockey,” Zhenya said. “We win. We friends. Make good team. I don’t leave. We stay in Pittsburgh.”

“Our team,” Sid said, his voice cracking. His hand cupped Zhenya’s skull, the last time he would touch Zhenya like this, as something more than friends.

“Penguins,” Zhenya said.

\+ + +

Sid was out of the lineup for another week. Zhenya played the best hockey he knew how, and they won most of those games, and then Sid was back, at last, and hopefully for good. They won his first game back, and the locker room was effervescent afterward, everyone hollering about how Sid was a good luck charm and giving him face washes while Sid beamed and turned pink. Zhenya stayed out of the scrum, but he met Sid’s gaze from across the room, and they smiled at each other. Their team.

He had been dreaming for weeks, and now the dream was over. He hadn’t thought of much beyond Sid in those weeks, and he was vaguely surprised to find his old life waiting for him on the other side, almost exactly the same as before. There was hockey to play, and practices to attend, and team meetings to wool-gather through. Meals to eat, teammates to chirp, Natasha to wake him in the morning by leaping on his diaphragm and demanding he watch cartoons with her. Sid to kick the ball to during two-touch. His captain and friend.

Not exactly the same. But almost.

He let himself cry about it only once, in the shower at home, where no one could hear him, his forehead pressed to the tiled wall as he gritted his teeth against the tears. He had survived loving Kristya, and he would survive loving Sid. Their time together had been a gift, unanticipated but treasured. He had taken the risk and not backed away, and he wasn’t sorry. He had been brave.

At the end of the month, when they were playing the Rangers, Dubinsky took Zhenya down against the boards and then stepped on his face. Dubinsky’s skate sliding through his cheek was cold and sharp, and the pain came a moment later, heat burning in to replace the chill. The heat of his blood dripping down his face.

He couldn’t tell how bad it was. He got up and started toward the tunnel, and then changed his mind and went back to the bench, because maybe it wasn’t that bad, and he just needed a bandage and kick in the ass.

The play continued at the other end of the ice, but all eyes on the bench were on him, the guys all up on their feet as he approached, calling his name. 

“Geno, you okay?” Talbo asked, blocking Zhenya’s way as he tried to come through the gate. “Holy fuck, bud, you’re really bleeding—”

“Talbot, _move_ ,” Stewie said, and he was there with a towel, his calm voice saying, “Let’s take a look at you.”

Zhenya needed eight stitches. “You’ll have a nice scar,” Dr. Burke told him, sewing him up. Scars didn’t make a man, but Zhenya expected he would look tough and impressive. Women would love it. 

He was back in the locker room in time for intermission, sitting at his stall as the guys came in from the ice. “Look who’s back,” Scuds called, the first one into the room, and everyone clustered around him to gawk at his face.

“Gross,” Staalsy said, reaching out a finger like he was going to touch.

Brooksie smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch him with your filthy paws.”

“You’re okay?” Seryozha said to him in Russian, and Zhenya nodded at him. It hurt a little, but he’d had worse. 

“Let’s win this game for G, boys,” Sid said, from somewhere in the back, and everyone shouted their agreement.

Zhenya looked up at them, his teammates all gathered to see how he was, to show their concern and that he belonged to them. They had named him and made him theirs. He was here to stay, for as long as they wanted him.

He slept in the next morning, and when he finally shuffled out to the kitchen, Seryozha had left to take Natasha to school already, and Ksusha was cleaning up after breakfast. She turned to watch Zhenya come in and said, “Oh, Zhenya, your poor face.”

He lifted his hand to touch his cheek. “It doesn’t look that bad, does it?” He had inspected himself in the mirror while he was brushing his teeth. The cut was barely swollen.

“It looked bad on TV,” she said. “I was glad to see you get up so quickly. Here, I put a plate in the oven for you.”

She sat with him at the table while he ate, scrolling through her phone and drinking a cup of tea. Sunlight streamed through the windows. The house was quiet and peaceful. Albert came in from wherever he had been napping and twined around Zhenya’s ankles. 

“Can I ask you for some advice?” Zhenya asked. He trusted her as much as he trusted Seryozha, after living in her home for a year and a half, being fed and teased and fussed over and loved. He wanted her opinion.

Ksusha set her phone aside and smiled at him. “Always.”

“I’m thinking about telling my parents,” Zhenya said. “You know. About me. But I’m not sure—do you think it’s a bad idea?”

“Oh, I wish I knew,” Ksusha said. She reached over to rest her hand on his forearm. “I don’t know, Zhenya. I can’t give you advice about this. I’ve never been in your position.”

“I want them to know,” Zhenya said. “But I’m afraid to tell them.”

“I got to know them a little, when they came to visit last season,” Ksusha said. “They love you so much. They’re so proud of you. But it’s easy for me to say, oh of course they’ll understand, of course they’ll be fine with it. I can’t say, Zhenya. I can’t promise you.”

Zhenya nodded. He knew.

He wanted to tell her about Sid. How that experience had changed him without changing him. What he had learned about himself: that he could live through it; that he belonged here. But that wasn’t his secret to share.

“Maybe I won’t tell them until I’m home for the summer,” Zhenya said. “So I can tell them in person.” It would be easier to do over the computer, when he could end the call and be alone afterward. But he hoped they would understand, and—if they did, it would be nice if he could hug them.

“That’s probably a good idea,” Ksusha said. She squeezed his arm. “I hope you know, whatever happens with them, you’ll always have a home here with us. You’re part of our family.”

Zhenya’s eyes flooded. He hadn’t expected it: her words, or his reaction. He lifted his free hand to wipe at his eyes. “Thank you,” he said, his voice as raw as his emotions. “I’m. That really means,” and then he gave up, his throat too tight to force out the words.

“Let me fix you some more tea,” Ksusha said. She leaned in to press a kiss to his temple. A blessing.

Zhenya wasn’t a smart or talented man, only lucky. He had made so many mistakes and done so many foolish things. Only the grace of God had gotten him this far. But somehow, even after all of his failures, he still had people who loved him, and a jersey to wear, and a friend to smile at in the locker room. He had a rich life.

They flew to New York that morning to play the Rangers at home in the evening. It was a short flight, only a little over an hour. Zhenya settled in at his seat by the window with his snacks and his book, ready to get through a few chapters before they landed. 

“How are you liking it?” Seryozha asked. The book was one he had recommended. 

“It’s good,” Zhenya said. He opened to his bookmark. He read a single sentence. Then he closed the book again and put it back in his bag, and put away his popcorn and his water bottle. “Actually, I think I might go play some cards.”

“Oh?” Seryozha said, smiling.

“Just feels like that kind of day,” Zhenya said.

Seryozha got up to let him out. Zhenya went down the aisle to the back of the plane, where Talbo was laughing as he shuffled the deck. Talbo glanced at him as Zhenya approached, and then did a double-take when Zhenya stopped instead of continuing on to the bathroom.

“What’s up, G?” Talbo said. “You want to play?”

He was grinning; he thought Zhenya didn’t. Zhenya had turned down every invitation for months.

“Okay,” Zhenya said.

He watched them all exchange looks. Then Bugsy smiled up at him. “You want to for real?”

“If it’s okay,” Zhenya said. He resisted the urge to shove his hands in his pockets.

“We’d love to have you, bud,” Talbo said. He patted the empty seat beside him. “Plop your ass down next to daddy.”

“What the fuck,” TK said, and threw a cocktail peanut at Talbo’s face.

“Ignore them,” Bugsy said. He took the deck from Talbo’s hands and started dealing out the cards. “We’ll play hearts. Do you know it?”

“No,” Zhenya said.

“No big deal,” Bugsy said. “We’ll teach you.”

 

### Winning Isn’t Everything

Losing in game six wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to Zhenya, but it was bad. He was ashamed of his tears until he realized that everyone else in the locker room was crying, too, even Seryozha, sitting beside Zhenya at their stalls and staring down at his hands. 

His tears roused Zhenya from his own grief and self-recrimination. He wrapped an arm around Seryozha’s shoulders and gave him a gentle shake. “Don’t cry, old man. We’ll drink vodka tonight until you can’t remember your own name.”

Seryozha gave Zhenya a rueful smile and wiped his face with his towel. “Natasha will be so disappointed.”

“Then we’ll win for her next year,” Zhenya said.

The room was quiet as everyone undressed and showered and changed to go home. Sid, possibly the only one among them who wasn’t actively crying, went around to have a few quiet words with everyone on the team: doing his duty, living up to those big expectations. He had done so well all through the playoffs. Zhenya was proud of him.

When it was his turn at last, and Sid came around with his carefully crafted expression of sympathetic encouragement, Zhenya tugged on the sleeve of Sid’s reeking, sweat-soaked undershirt. “Sit,” he said.

Sid sat. “Geno—”

Whatever he was going to say, Zhenya didn’t need to hear it. “Sid, I want tell you. You play so hard. You lead team. You do so good. You make us better, play better. I’m proud you captain.”

Sid stared at him for a moment, unblinking, and then dropped his head. “Thanks, G. I really. I needed to hear that.”

Zhenya bumped his knee against Sid’s. He missed what they’d had; it would probably always be at the back of his mind, every time he looked at Sid. But he had said they would be friends, and he had meant it, and it wasn’t even awkward anymore. They went for lunch sometimes. Sid had even made a joke about blowjobs once, although he turned red immediately after. 

“When are you taking off?” Sid asked.

Zhenya shrugged. He hadn’t thought about it. He would have to call his parents, and talk to the Gonchars. “Don’t know. Few day.”

“Let’s get lunch,” Sid said. “Do you want to? I’m going with Flower after cleanout tomorrow. So maybe the day after?”

“Good,” Zhenya said, and Sid bumped their knees again and went on to his next victim.

They met for lunch downtown two days later, at a place the team liked to go near the Square. The servers knew them and would try to get them a table in the back, where they wouldn’t be interrupted so much. It was a Friday, and a little late for the usual office worker lunch rush, and they were led directly to a table out on the patio in the back, out of the way of foot traffic. Screened on one side by a box planter full of bamboo, they had as much privacy as they could hope for in a public place.

Zhenya put on his sunglasses and shifted his chair so he was fully in the shade, the legs scraping across the flagstones. Sitting still, with the breeze blowing, the temperature was perfect. He loved summer.

He examined Sid from behind his mirrored shades. Sid looked fine. A little scrawny, but they all were. He was wearing a Penguins T-shirt, which he didn’t usually out in public, because he didn’t want people to see it and then look at his face and put two and two together. Maybe he wanted the reminder right now. They had lost, but hockey went on. They had a new season ahead of them.

“What are your plans for the summer?” Sid asked, after they had put in their drink orders.

Zhenya shrugged. “Go home. Train. Maybe vacation, I don’t know yet.”

“Yeah,” Sid said. “Same. Might go to LA for a while, but probably in Halifax most of the time.” He ducked his head. “Maybe I’ll, uh. Sleep with some guys. You know, sow my oats a little.”

Zhenya wasn’t sure how sewing oatmeal related to Sid’s sexual activities, but he let it go, along with the small sting of thinking about Sid with someone other than him. Sid could sleep with anyone he wanted to; it wasn’t Zhenya’s business anymore.

“Nice break,” Zhenya said. “Don’t think about hockey. Then it’s next season.”

“Yeah,” Sid said. He toyed with the straw in his water glass. “Listen, G. Uh, could I text you some this summer? Or email, I guess. Don’t know if my phone can text to Russia.”

A rush of adrenaline set Zhenya’s heart pounding. Why was Sid asking him this? Guys mostly went their separate ways for the summer. Zhenya didn’t expect to hear from anyone until late August. Sid certainly hadn’t texted him at all, last off-season.

“Why you want,” he said cautiously.

Sid gradually turned red, which made Zhenya’s heart beat even faster. “I guess I’ve been thinking a lot. About what kind of life I want, and like. What kind of person I want to be.” He took the straw from his glass altogether and started bending it into quarters. “We played really well, you know? I mean, the Wings were better. They beat us fair and square. But we tried really hard, and we all did our best, and we lost anyway.”

Zhenya couldn’t breathe. “So?”

“I still think I can win with you,” Sid said. “Don’t get me wrong. But.” He sucked in a lungful of air. “Sometimes I really miss you. And I know it’s not, uh. I’m not saying we should try again right now. I just. I miss you.”

“Sid, it’s not good idea,” Zhenya said hoarsely. None of their concerns had been resolved. If things went badly, Zhenya would be the one to leave. None of that had changed. Pittsburgh loved him, but it loved Sid more.

“Yeah, I know,” Sid said. He dropped his straw on the table and finally, finally met Zhenya’s eyes. “I know it’s not. I know it’s not the right time. Just putting my cards on the table. I don’t want to have some hidden agenda or whatever.” 

Sid would be a pain in his ass forever. Zhenya slid his feet around under the table until they bumped against Sid’s. He was going to float up into the sky and drift away on the warm air. He pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head, squinting a little at the light. He wanted Sid to see his face.

Maybe they could try again, after they won a Cup or two. When they were old, and had stopped caring what anyone thought. Maybe they could be together then.

Until then, he would have a friend.

“I want you to know that it’s your team, too,” Sid said. “They want to re-sign you. You aren’t going to have to leave, okay? You told me I led the team, and—you led it, too. You played so well. You make me want to be better.”

Zhenya regretted removing his sunglasses. He took a sip of his beer to give himself a moment to recover. “You email?” he asked, when his throat didn’t feel quite so tight.

“Yeah,” Sid said. He covered his mouth with one hand. Zhenya could see his smile anyway, in the sweet crease of his eyes.

Maybe they wouldn’t wait until they were old.

“Skype,” Zhenya said decisively. It would be better for his English than slogging through Sid’s emails.

“Okay,” Sid said. His eyes creased more, until they disappeared completely. “Okay. Yeah. We can Skype.”

The breeze rustled through the bamboo. A woman laughed on the other side of the patio, and a bird startled from its perch overhead and swooped down toward them and away. Beneath the table, hidden from view, Zhenya reached out and took Sid’s hand.

\+ + +

Zhenya called his parents that evening to discuss his travel plans. He hadn’t booked a flight yet; he was thinking about maybe going to Miami with the Gonchars for a while, and he knew his parents would be disappointed. They missed him and wanted to see him, and he missed them, too, and wanted to see them; but he’d had a huge, challenging, magnificent, life-changing season, with how he’d played, and everything with Sid, and losing like that to the Wings. He needed some time to ease out of being Geno before he was ready to go home and be Zhenechka again.

They had set a time to talk, but when the call connected, Zhenya’s father was alone, smiling from Zhenya’s laptop screen.

“Just you?” Zhenya said, slumping his shoulders in exaggerated disappointment.

His father laughed. “Your mother had to take Denis to the clinic. He’s got another sinus infection.”

“Can’t he go by himself?” Zhenya said, but Denis would never go unless someone dragged him, and they both knew it.

His father was understanding about Miami. “You’ve had a long season, it’s good for you to take a vacation,” he said. “But not for more than a couple of weeks or your mother will miss you too much.”

“One week only,” Zhenya said, relieved that they wouldn’t have to argue about it. “I’ll book my flights home at the same time.”

“Send us your reservations and we’ll pick you up at the airport,” his father said, and that was all settled. They talked some about Magnitka’s post-season, and about Zhenya’s aunt, who had recently been hospitalized with what turned out to be dehydration. The conversation wound down. Zhenya’s father said, “Well, I’ll let you—”

“Are you still mad at me?” Zhenya interrupted. “For leaving Magnitka?”

He hadn’t known he was going to say it. But he needed to know, now when he was thinking about the shape of his life and his career, whether his father still thought he had made a mistake.

His father sighed. “Oh, Zhenya. I wasn’t ever mad at you. It’s true I was disappointed. I thought you broke your promise, and I wasn’t proud of you for that. I didn’t think you were ready for the NHL, but you’ve proven me wrong, hmm? And I’ve thought about it more, and I think Metallurg’s management treated you poorly. You weren’t wrong to leave.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t love me anymore,” Zhenya admitted. He picked at a hangnail to avoid meeting his father’s gaze. “You were so ashamed of me.”

His father sighed again. “There’s nothing you could do that would make us stop loving you. Me or your mother.”

“Really?” Zhenya said. He glanced at the screen. “Nothing?”

“Nothing,” his father said firmly. “If you killed a man in cold blood, your mother would knit you socks and mail them to you in prison.”

What if I sucked a man’s dick, Zhenya thought. But he wasn’t ready for that. This summer, maybe. This summer he would tell them.

“Do you think I did the right thing?” Zhenya asked. “Coming here?”

“It’s not up to me,” his father said. “Was it the right thing for you?”

Zhenya thought about it: every hard day, losing in the final this year, the way he still couldn’t really speak English, his intense loneliness, the wreck of his friendship with Sasha, all of the mistakes he’d made. But also his place on the team, respected and useful. The Gonchars and the warm acceptance he’d found in their home. Sid leaping into his arms on the ice after a goal. The arena full of fans all shouting their love for the team and the game.

“Papa, it’s my dream,” he said.

\+ + +

> **July 2, 2008**
> 
> Evgeni Malkin is staying in Pittsburgh for quite some time.
> 
> The Penguins signed the MVP finalist to a five-year extension worth $43.5 million on Wednesday, a deal that will keep him under contract until 2013-14. The 21-year-old forward still has one year left on his initial three-year entry-level contract.
> 
> His deal is equal to one signed last year by teammate Sidney Crosby that begins with the upcoming season.
> 
> “This is an important signing for our franchise and the city of Pittsburgh and we commend Evgeni on his commitment to the future of the franchise and the city,” Penguins general manager Ray Shero said in a statement. “This signing continues to ensure the young core of this team can stay intact for years to come.” — [Malkin signs five-year extension](http://www.espn.com/nhl/news/story?id=3471137)

**Author's Note:**

> If you feel like crying over baby Geno, here’s some footage I find particularly devastating:
> 
> [rookie Geno talking about girls](https://youtu.be/dlw3GOCow5I)  
> [documentary from 2007](https://youtu.be/Z1gUFOcnFhI)  
> [forcibly interviewed by Bugsy, April 2008](https://youtu.be/6wnE5maHQco?list=PL5j0KL6grnaJsr1U9HtX_ocjryAeU1utN&t=16) (I find it very sweet how Bugsy speaks slowly and uses hand gestures to help Geno understand him)  
> [early interview from December 2008](https://youtu.be/e8wBHDFU_Ho)  
> [interview from 2009 ASG](https://youtu.be/fdHjmxmOiV0)  
> and of course [Geno last fall reflecting on his career and his early days in Pittsburgh](https://youtu.be/dxGmVvpM7Lk)
> 
> For further crying, this is the song I listened to on repeat while writing this story: [Woke Up Hurting — Frightened Rabbit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvEEmGgI-04)


End file.
